How Mazzulla challenges the media ahead of the Celtics-Mavs final

How Mazzulla challenges the media ahead of the Celtics-Mavs final originally appeared on NBC Sports Boston

The NBA playoff series is like a game of chess and Joe Mazzulla can't wait to make the first move.

The Boston Celtics will be back in action after a nine-day break on Thursday when Game 1 of the 2024 NBA Finals kicks off at TD Garden. The Celtics and Dallas Mavericks have both had plenty of time to prepare for each other, while the media has had plenty of time to analyze every angle of this series.

But when it came to discussing strategy, Mazzulla gave reporters an important reminder on Tuesday.

As Chris Forsberg of NBC Sports Boston and John Karalis of the Boston Sports Journal report in a new CelticsTalk Podcast, Mazzulla was talking about narratives in this series when he pointed to a television in the press conference room that was playing NBA TV. The segment focused on the Mavs' excellent lob game and how “imperative” it was that Boston had to “stop” Dallas big men Daniel Gafford and Dereck Lively II from catching alley-oops at the basket.

“(Mazzulla) looks at it and says: 'See? We can do this, but there is still the danger – you give up on this,'” Karalis told Forsberg on Celtics talk. “And at his press conference he said, 'If you quit A, you quit B, and if you quit B, you quit C. And that's a decision.'

“So he said, 'Look, we're going to stop (the Mavs' lob game). We're going to stop that. But then we're going to give up something else, and you guys are going to say, 'Oh, you have to stop this, that and the other.'”

“He basically said that they were stopping certain things, but that doing so would open them up to other narratives and that the team essentially had to block out those narratives. (He) sort of put the onus on us (as reporters) to be smarter in our reporting and say, 'You're giving up certain things because they take away the credit.'”

The Celtics and Mavs are both offensively outstanding in multiple areas, which is why they are the two teams remaining in the playoffs and have the NBA's two best records since the Feb. 8 trade deadline. To reiterate Mazzulla's point, it's less about what the C's need to stop and more about what they're willing to give up.

And Mazzulla calls on the media to highlight the latter instead of constantly emphasizing the former.

“If he's true to his word and the Celtics took the lobs away from Lively and Gafford, then in that moment he's kind of telling us, 'You guys have to figure out what we're going to live with if we take that away from them,'” Karalis added.

“So don't write, 'PJ Washington is killing them! They need to figure out how to stop PJ Washington.' You need to write, 'They're willing to live with PJ Washington because they're taking all these lobs away from them.'”

Mazzulla's comments are a good reminder that most decisions on defense are intentional, so if Mavs forward PJ Washington gets multiple open chances and scores 20 points in Game 1, it's probably because the Celtics are trying to take the ball away from Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving and/or defend against lobs in the box to Gafford and Lively.

At the end of the day, the only stat that matters is a win, and it will be interesting to see what strategies Mazzulla and Mavs head coach Jason Kidd use to put their teams on the road to success.

Also in this episode: