Joe Mazzulla has never been the kind of coach who settles into the familiar, and Mike Conley is already feeling that firsthand.
At his introductory press conference alongside Paul George, Conley talked about how much the league has changed since his rookie season in 2008, especially the explosion of three-point shooting. Back then, the Golden State Warriors led the NBA with 26.6 attempts per game.
That number would have ranked dead-last this past season by nearly four full attempts. In 2026, Golden State was back atop the league, this time launching 44 threes per game.
Mazzulla has spent his Celtics tenure pushing that same kind of boundary-testing approach, and Conley said the coach’s style has been exactly what he expected - and then some.
“I thought he was crazy before,” Conley said with a laugh. “He's not.
He's not crazy. No, my impressions have been everything that I expected.
I think from here, from some of the players who played for him, just from around the league, his ideas, he's not afraid to push the envelope a little bit to try things, to try different schemes and different reactions for players, different ways of getting things across. It's refreshing for me.”
That openness is the key. Conley is a veteran who has seen just about everything, which makes him a strong test case for a coach like Mazzulla. Instead of leaning on the same old habits, Mazzulla has already started pushing Conley to view the game through a different lens.
“You're used to just having coaches kind of be kind of structured in a certain way, and how basketball has always been played,” Conley said. “I get here and I feel like I don't know what I'm doing.”
Mazzulla jumped in to say that was a compliment, and that response says plenty about how he operates. He wants experienced players to feel a little off-balance, because that’s where new ideas can take hold.
It’s a formula Celtics fans have already seen before with Jrue Holiday. Holiday, already established as a championship-level defender in Milwaukee, came to Boston and found a different way to think about the game under Mazzulla.
“The first time we played Philly, I was guarding Joel [Embiid],” Holiday said on Draymond Green’s podcast in 2024. “Being a roamer, a disrupter, has been so fun to me.
It’s been fun because I see the game in a different way now. I see the reason why I’m on this person.
Me and Joe talk about this quite a bit, I start to catch what Joe is thinking defensively before he tells me …
“Before I was so locked into hounding the ball, disrupting it … and now, I might be on a non-shooter, the next day I might be on a shooter, I might be on the big … so many different things play into the defense now and I didn't see the game that way.”
That kind of relationship cuts both ways. Mazzulla gets a veteran willing to engage, question, and adapt.
The player gets a new way to see the floor. And in the process, both sides grow.
Conley is in a different stage of his career than most players Mazzulla has coached. He’s older than Mazzulla, and when Conley was starting 80 games for the Memphis Grizzlies, Mazzulla was still playing college ball at West Virginia. Plenty of veterans in that spot would tune a coach like this out.
Conley isn’t doing that. Less than a month before his 39th birthday, he’s leaning into the challenge.
“There's so much for me to learn about the game, but the way he sees the game is a different lens,” Conley said. “So I think that it's a special thing.”
In Other News...
Paul George Already Has Celtics Fans Thinking About One Bigger Question
Paul Georges first scenes in Celtics gear at the Auerbach Center were enough to get the conversation moving again around Boston. After years of speculation and patience from the front office, the Celtics finally made the move to bring in a player whose career has long been defined by elite two-way talent, tough stretches with injuries, and the kind of pedigree that changes the tone around a roster.
Now the bigger question is less about whether George fits and more about how he fits next to Jayson Tatum. Boston has spent plenty of time imagining this kind of addition, and the early workout imagery only sharpens the debate over whether George is arriving as a featured option or as the kind of complementary piece that can make an already formidable group even harder to handle. [Read more 🡒]
Celtics Suddenly Have A Frontcourt Decision Fans Will Want To Watch
The Celtics frontcourt suddenly looks a little more crowded after bringing in Mitchell Robinson, fresh off a championship season with the Knicks, and that naturally puts a spotlight on how Boston wants to sort out its big-man rotation. Neemias Queta addressed the addition with the kind of calm, team-first tone coaches usually appreciate, saying he sees Robinson as a positive addition and making it clear those lineup calls belong to Joe Mazzulla.
Queta also pointed out the part that makes this worth watching: he and Robinson do not bring exactly the same thing to the floor. That gives Boston some real options depending on the matchup, but it also means the rotation picture could be more fluid than it was before Robinson arrived. For a Celtics team trying to balance roles and strengths up front, this is one of those situations that could develop into a useful weapon or a tricky decision. [Read more 🡒]
Celtics Trade Idea Reopens A Painful Depth Versus Fit Debate
A fresh trade proposal has reopened one of the Celtics more familiar roster debates: whether the team should lean into fit or keep valuing the depth that has helped carry it through long stretches of the season. The idea on the table would bring Cam Johnson from the Denver Nuggets to Boston in exchange for Payton Pritchard, Sam Hauser and a 2030 second-round pick, a move framed as one that could help both sides from a basketball and financial standpoint.
For the Celtics, the appeal is obvious enough to understand why it keeps coming up. Johnson would add another layer of size and versatility to a rotation already built around wing play, while Pritchard and Hauser represent the kind of dependable depth Boston has learned not to take for granted. It is still only a speculative pitch, not an actual deal, but it lands right in the middle of the tension that has followed this roster for a while: how much depth is too much to give up when the fit looks cleaner on paper? [Read more 🡒]