Fans of the Boston Celtics have a reputation for being a tough crowd when it comes to judging their favorite team. So when Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla recently agreed to answer questionsfrom listeners to the 98.5 The Sports Hub "Zolak and Bertrand" show, it likely did not surprise anyone to hear that Mazzulla was peppered with some hard questions about a controversial offseason for the storied ball club.
Perhaps no other exchange fit that bill than when he was asked by one listener if the team was better in the wake of the decision to trade star forward Jaylen Brown to the Philadelphia 76ers for Paul George and draft assets. In reply, the Celtics coach pulled no punches – but also rejected the counterfactual frame of the query.
"The answer
is different," said Mazzulla, sidestepping the intent of the question. "I don’t think it’s about better or worse, it’s about different."
"It’s about two things – we’ve talked about it a bunch during the offseason," he added. "One, the gratitude of people who made the Celtics better than they found it from a community standpoint, from a competitive standpoint."
"(And two), his career as a Celtic will go down in history. And now we’re in a situation where we’re looking to create that for the current team that we have now … it’s never a question of better or worse, it’s always a question of different and taking advantage of the strengths that you have."
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This article originally appeared on Celtics Wire: Mazzulla grilled by radio show callers, asked if Boston Celtics better sans Jaylen Brown
