He might not use Boston Celtics President of Basketball Operations Brad Stevens' terminology when referring to what the Celtics president frames as a "Kaizen" approach to coaching basketball, but Boston head coach Joe Mazzulla may embody that point of view more than any other coach in the NBA.
The West Virginia alum made a point of breaking it down in a recent interviewwith "No Show Dogs" podcast, explaining how he tries to keep his roster from getting too high or too low at any point of the season given their recent play – good or bad. "If you win a game and identify yourself as a winner, that's dangerous," said Mazzulla. "If you lose your game and define yourself as a loser, that's also dangerous. Whether you're an athlete, whether you're a coach,
whatever your job may be, your identity has to be in something bigger than your work and there has to be a purpose to what you do"
"And so I say that ... you just don't make that decision once," he added. "I think you have to make that decision, not always daily. Sometimes you're in a good place, but you have to check in every couple times during the season."
"You go on a losing streak, you're not a loser, you're just losing games," he explained. "And it's the same thing for the people around you. We're not losers, we're losing. And we're also, if we're on a winning streak, we're not winners we're just winning."
"I think you have to maintain that, and also comes into how you handle the wins and losses at home, but also with the team. One of the things we try to do is whether can we not tell the next day if we won or lost. I think getting overexcited after a win or getting down after a loss – can you come in the next day, and buy our tone buy our communication, buy our mindset towards whether it's a practice, (or a) walk-through film session. Can we act as if we don't even remember what the result was? I think that helps, and then at home, can you not take your coaching identity (home with you)?"
"Can you leave that where it is, and be the person that, whether your wife or your family needs you to be, but also the people around you need you to be?" asked Mazzulla. And as one of the highest-regarded coaches in the league, it does seem that Mazzulla not only strikes that balance – but is a standard-bearer for it.
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This article originally appeared on Celtics Wire: No recency bias: Joe Mazzulla on his Boston Celtics coaching strategy
