LAS VEGAS — After the Celtics’ first Summer League game, Joe Mazzulla rushed to the back of the gym and jokingly put Jordan Walsh in a headlock.
The two burst into laughter.
Walsh, who was a member of the Celtics Summer League squad for the past three years, was on the Las Vegas sidelines for the first time in his pro career. He chatted with Neemias Queta, Derrick White, and Jayson Tatum, cheered on teammates Hugo Gonzalez and Amari Williams, and ultimately got to catch up with his longtime head coach,
too.
But while Mazzulla and Walsh were happy to reunite, it was far from the first time they had spent time together outside of Boston this summer. Just a few weeks earlier, the two hung out in Dallas, Texas, where Walsh grew up. The visit was part of Mazzulla’s offseason world tour, a part of his intentional summer of travel aimed at deepening his relationships with every player on the Celtics roster.
I sat down with Mazzulla to discuss this unorthodox offseason approach, why he spent the beginning of NBA free agency in Madrid, Spain — and why he found himself in an Omaha gymnasium during the NBA Finals.
Here is that story.
The origins of the Joe Mazzulla offseason world tour
When Joe Mazzulla first took over as Celtics interim head coach just days before the 2022 training camp, he was so focused on adjusting to the strategic side of the position that he felt like his connection with the players took a hit.
“In Year One, I didn’t spend enough time with the guys,” he said Thursday. “And I was trying to catch up tactically, catch up systematically.”
That was four years ago. Since then, he has prioritized making a concerted effort to get to know each and every player on a deep and profound level.
You can certainly do some of that relationship-building in Boston: the Celtics head coach makes the rounds after every practice to ensure that he has a touch point with each player on the roster, even if it’s a brief one. (I’ll always remember Mazzulla taking time to chat with each of the team’s two-way players during the open practices of the 2024 NBA Finals, from JD Davison to Drew Peterson).
But doing so on the players’ home turf is different, he’s learned.
Last offseason, Mazzulla visited Derrick White in Colorado and Sam Hauser in Wisconsin, and helped out at Payton Pritchard’s basketball camp in Boston, among other stops.
“Meeting people where they’re at is important,“ Mazzulla said. “Anytime you can go to someone else’s territory, you learn more about them, and you have an understanding of why they are the way they are.”
This summer, Mazzulla has taken that commitment to another level; it’s mid-July, and he has already spent time with four different players in four different parts of the world: Jordan Walsh in Texas, Baylor Scheierman in Nebraska, Hugo Gonzalez in Spain, and Neemias Queta in Portugal.
Barbecue with Jordan Walsh in Dallas
Things kicked off with a trip to Dallas, where Mazzulla spent quality time with Walsh in his hometown. The two went to Walsh’s favorite barbecue spot: “You kind of got to be there to see it,” Walsh tells me.
For both player and coach, the trip served as an opportunity to talk about life outside of basketball and to get to know each other on a deeper level.
Walsh said he learned things about Mazzulla he never knew, and that the rare quality time was valuable.
“Jordan and I had a great conversation, just kind of understanding how he grew up,” Mazzulla said. “But really, it’s not even about learning about that. I think guys are more comfortable in their home atmosphere. So, even the types of conversations that you’re having are more comfortable, and it might spark different questions, different conversations if you’re on their home territory. We had deeper conversations because we were in a more vulnerable situation.”
Walsh was (positively) caught off guard when Mazzulla first initiated the visit.
“I was definitely surprised,” Walsh recalled with a smile. “Like, what the hell does Joe want? But it was cool. It was so cool that he was making that kind of effort to come see me.”
Walsh joked he kept Mazzulla out of the trouble: “I kept him in the good part of the city, where it’s good food, good people. He didn’t get to experience the other side. Maybe one day.”
A few days later, Mazzulla hung out with Scheierman in Omaha. Among other things, the two worked out at Creighton University, where Scheierman played for two years.
“It shows a lot about him and who he is as a person,” Scheierman said in an interview with Hurrdat Sports. “He really cares about the connections and relationships. That’s just a big part of life. It meant a lot to have him here, just catching some Omaha vibes.”
Cheering on Hugo Gonzalez at the World Cup
In early July, Mazzulla was on the other side of the world, supporting Hugo Gonzalez in the World Cup qualifying tournament in Madrid, Spain.
“We went out to dinner a couple times,” Gonzalez said. “He went to every practice — so really, really grateful that he was willing to be there.”
Knowing that Mazzulla is a big soccer fan, Gonzalez took him to the Bernabéu, the second-largest football arena in the country, as well as other notable venues.
“I try to show him where I’ve been eight or nine years of my life,” Gonzalez said. “The ones who built me as a player, and he wanted to know it, so I just showed him Valdebebas, [which] is like the Auerbach Center of Real Madrid.”
For several days, Mazzulla was able to observe Gonzalez as a fan rather than a coach. He sat by his wife, Camai, who pointed out that in a rare moment, her husband was able to watch the 20-year-old from the perspective of a fan.
“It was cool to just watch him play,” Mazzulla said. “I sat with his family. I wasn’t really critiquing his game; it’s a different game. I got to spend time with their coach, who’s a great coach, and learn from him. It was just an opportunity to just kind of be there for him more than anything else, and watch the game from a different perspective.”
Gonzalez played great in the match-up that Mazzulla watched, tallying 16 points, 5 assists, 5 rebounds, 2 steals, and a block in 20 mins, while hitting 4 of 7 three-point attempts.
“We were laughing because I had one funny action shooting a one-legged three, and we were talking about that,” he said. “But we weren’t talking about coaching points or nothing like that. We were just talking more like we usually do, like trying to make fun.”
For Neemias Queta, having Joe Mazzulla in Portugal was ‘surreal’
At the beginning of June, Mazzulla flew to Lisbon to work out with Neemias Queta in the gym where he first learned how to play the game he now excels at. That came just a few weeks before Queta signed a long-term extension with the franchise.
Mazzulla rebounded for Queta at the Futebol Clube Barreirense, the first club in which Queta ever played basketball.
“It’s just surreal,” Queta said. “A couple years ago, if you had said an NBA coach is coming to that specific gym just to see me and get to know me, I would have been like, ‘You gotta be kidding me.’ Joe makes sure — he wants to make that extra step, extra effort, just to make sure you feel comfortable. And I think that’s one of the reasons why he’s such a good coach. He worries about people, and that’s why I’m running through a wall for him.”
For Mazzulla, it was important to better understand Queta’s origins: he got to meet his family, coaches, and childhood friends, and step on the parquet where Queta picked up a ball for the first time.
“It’s like, ‘Oh, this is how you grew up,’” Mazzulla said. “It’s a respect factor. It’s a level of like, ‘Hey, this is important — and I care about more than you as a player.’”
Mazzulla plans on continuing a summer of relationship-building
Four years into his coaching tenure, Mazzulla points to the relationship building as one of his biggest areas of growth.
“That’s one of the things I got better at,” he said. “You just realize like, ‘Okay, how can we make this relationship deeper, more important? Because we don’t have a ton of turnover on the roster. We have 5 or 6 guys that have been here, so like that was something that I had to get better at from Year One, and then I had to find different ways to do it every year.”
(Jayson Tatum, Derrick White, Payton Pritchard, and Sam Hauser are entering their 5th seasons with Mazzulla as head coach. Jordan Walsh and Neemias Queta are entering their fourth, Baylor Scheierman is entering his third, and Hugo Gonzalez, Luka Garza, Amari Williams, and Ron Harper Jr. are entering their second).
Mazzulla will squeeze in at least a few more offseason visits before the season begins; he’ll visit Garza in Iowa and Harper Jr. in New Jersey, among others. The goal is to get quality 1-on-1 time with each of the new players, too.
“It just feels amazing,” Gonzalez said. “He is a person that likes to encourage, and tries to build a personal relationship that goes further than just a player and a coach. He wants to be engaged in the things that you do in the summer and get to know you, get to know where you’re from, the things that made you be in the NBA. So I’m pretty grateful for him to have that time with me.”
Mazzulla and his staff are spending lots of time in the film room too, figuring out the X’s and O’s that will help maximize this roster next season. But that won’t detract from the off-court bonding.
“That stuff matters,” Mazzulla said.
This is Part II in a two-part sit-down conversation with Joe Mazzulla. Part I — a discussion about the Jaylen Brown trade, a summer of reflection, gratitude, and more — can be found here.
