Former Celtics GM Says Joe Mazzulla is 'Better Than Ime Udoka'

High praise from the legendary Celtic.

He took his fair share of criticism during the NBA playoffs but Boston Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla impressed a lot of people in his first year as the guy calling all the shots. 

Mazzulla took over as the interim head coach once the team decided to suspend Ime Udoka for the entire 2022-23 season for "violation of team policies". Despite the unexpected coaching change, the Celtics continued their winning ways and in mid-February, Boston removed the interim tag from Mazzulla officially giving him the head coaching title.

Ime Udoka took the Celtics to the NBA Finals in his first year on the job a season ago and many around the league believe he is one of the brightest young coaches in the game. A lot of folks also believe that Boston handled the Udoka situation poorly and that he should still be the man in charge. However, former Celtics GM Danny Ainge, who is now the CEO of Basketball Operations for the Utah Jazz, recently took the side of Mazzulla in a recent interview with Dan Shaughnessy of the Boston Globe.

“This team found joy. They were inconsistent, but they were rooting for each other. They were all defending Joe in the media," Ainge said. “You see Joe’s toughness and stubbornness. He’s a relentless worker. He has a passion to learn. Joe is a leader, and I think this was a difficult situation with the high expectations the team had coming in. I don’t think there’s anybody there that doesn’t believe that Joe is better than Ime [Udoka] as a coach."

Last week, Celtics President of Basketball Operations, Brad Stevens, also defended the rookie head coach.

"I thought he did a really good job with this group. Everybody's going to overreact to the best players and coaches after every game. That's the way it always is. We know that going in so we have to be able to judge things on the whole. He's a terrific leader. He'll only get better at anything -- he can learn from this year because he's constantly trying to learn. And he's accountable. Those leadership qualities are hard to find. I know they're easy to talk about but when you can show all those through the expectations and the microscope that he was under, that's hard to do. Was he perfect? Would he like to have some moments back? Every coach would. Even the coaches nobody talks about would. We all that have coached know how hard that is. And at the same time, our players, our staff, everybody around him believe in him and we've got to do our best to support him going forward."

Mazzulla led the Celtics to a 57-25 record, marking the second-most wins by a rookie head coach in Celtics history. Bill Russell holds the record with 60 wins in the 1966-67 season.

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