Pretty much no one but the most ardent fans of the Philadelphia 76ers
had them beating the Boston Celtics in the first round of the 2026 NBA Playoffs. But even with the longest offseason in recent memory for the Celtics, Boston head coach made the most of the situation. "It's obviously longer than you want it to be, but you try to take advantage of the time," he explained at Boston's 2026-27 Media Day proceedings."That was obviously one of the focal points this summer, trying to get to know the guys on a different level, (to) learn more about them," he added. "The trip with (Ron Harper Jr.) was great, (I) got to see the competitiveness of his entire family, and anything that you can try to learn to build a better relation with the guys was important."
"Hopefully we don't have that much offseason time again, but we try to take advantage of it," continued the Celtics coach. "I think that off-season conversation is looking at last season, but also looking at the journey in the last five years, the trends, the things that you've been through, the perspective of the league, teams that are getting better."
"So you try to look at a holistic perspective of the journey that we've been on the last four or five years, and what can you get better at from last year," said Mazzulla. "I think there's a difference in the regular season playoffs to the intensity of with which you do things; there's a lot of similarities."
"At the end of the day, you have to be able to execute. I think what changes is you know how you have to execute on higher amounts of duress, where can we grow and get better at that."
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This article originally appeared on Celtics Wire: How Joe Mazzulla made the most of a long Boston Celtics offseason
