Joe Mazzulla doesn’t sound like a coach chasing a statue, a headline, or even much credit at all.
As the Boston Celtics get ready for the 2026-27 NBA season with a reshaped roster, Mazzulla opened up about the kind of legacy he wants to leave in Boston sports. His answer was blunt, almost deliberately self-effacing.
“If the people around you didn’t do what they do… I wouldn’t do anything. The thing I reflect on the most is… I think you have to be willing to be forgotten. I think that’s kind of my main goal.
“I want to be forgotten about. Because that means after you… It was better.
I think that’s what it means to be a Celtic. However long you play, coach, work for the Celtics…” said Mazzulla, per Josh Chambers of Maryland Men's Basketball on X, formerly Twitter.
That’s a striking way for a head coach to talk about his own place in the story, especially with the Celtics moving into a new chapter. Boston is less than two months from opening the 2026-27 season with a very different group than the one that blew a 3-1 lead last year to the Philadelphia 76ers.
Jaylen Brown is now with those 76ers, while Paul George is back in Boston, and that leaves Mazzulla with the job of making the pieces fit.
He’s already had a run of recognition. Mazzulla won NBA Coach of the Year after guiding the Celtics to the No. 2 seed in the Eastern Conference last season, a year many saw as a gap year. But the postseason brought the same problem for Boston again: a heavy diet of threes, little sign of a real fallback option, and a cold stretch at exactly the wrong time.
The result was another early exit. Boston dropped three straight to the 76ers and went home in the first round for the first time in five years.
Now Mazzulla heads into another season with a chance to prove he still belongs among the NBA’s best, even if his own words suggest he’d rather the credit fade once the work is done.
In Other News...
Celtics Got An Eye-Opening Summer Read On Neemias Queta
The Celtics have had a front-row seat to some international basketball in the early summer, with Neemias Queta, Hugo Gonzalez, Luka Garza and Amari Williams all away representing their national teams. For Boston, the most eye-catching showing so far has come from Queta, who helped Portugal stun Spain in the ongoing 2027 FIBA EuroBasket World Cup Qualifiers with a strong all-around effort that hinted at how far his game can travel when he is given a bigger role.
Luka Garza also turned in a useful outing for Bosnia and Herzegovina in a win over Italy, adding another reminder that Bostons end-of-roster and depth options are getting meaningful game reps while the Celtics wait for the next stage of the summer to unfold. Quetas performance, though, is the one worth circling back to for a team that has spent the season looking for reliable size and energy, because international play can sometimes reveal a little more than summer workouts ever do. [Read more 🡒]
Celtics Still Face One Lineup Call That Could Reshape The Rotation
The Celtics projected starting group is coming into focus, with Jayson Tatum, Derrick White, Paul George and Neemias Queta expected to occupy four spots when the new season opens. The one lingering question is at point guard, where Payton Pritchard has emerged as the leading candidate to take the job, even as Boston continues to weigh other options such as Hugo Gonzalez and Baylor Scheierman.
Pritchards case is easy to understand: he has become one of the teams most reliable guards and would give the Celtics another steady presence alongside their established core. The debate is less about whether he can handle the role than whether Boston gets more from him by starting him or by preserving his value as a sixth-man spark, a call that could shape how the rotation settles in around the rest of the roster. [Read more 🡒]
Celtics May Have A Mitchell Robinson Problem In Big Games
Mitchell Robinson arrived with the kind of defensive reputation the Celtics wanted to add to a playoff roster, but the fit gets trickier once the games tighten up. Boston knew it was getting an elite rim protector and rebounder, and it also knew the offensive limitations that have followed him for years. In a regular-season setting, those tradeoffs can be easier to manage.
In the highest-leverage moments, though, the math changes fast. Robinsons free-throw issues and injury history have already led to reduced playing time in critical games, including during the 2026 playoffs with the Knicks, and that is the sort of problem Joe Mazzulla may have to solve on the fly. If opponents start using intentional fouling to force Boston into uncomfortable decisions, the Celtics may need to rethink how they deploy him when the margin for error disappears. [Read more 🡒]