Joe Mazzulla's thoughts on Knicks coaching job will make Celtics fans smile

The New York Knicks tried to steal Joe Mazzulla away from the Boston Celtics, but he never wants to be anywhere but in Boston.
Boston Celtics, Joe Mazzulla, New York Knicks, Tom Thibodeau
Boston Celtics, Joe Mazzulla, New York Knicks, Tom Thibodeau | Adam Glanzman/GettyImages

Joe Mazzulla just fired back at the rumor that the New York Knicks tried to steal him away from the Boston Celtics this summer, which was originally reported by Marc Stein of The Stein Line. He made it clear that he has no intention of coaching anywhere but Boston (h/t Bobby Manning of CLNS Media):

"That never reached me & there's only one team that I want to coach, it's the Boston Celtics…” Mazzulla said on 98.5 The Sports Hub. “I'm gonna be here for however long ownership and the city will have me ... or I'm gonna go coach my kids' soccer team or something."

From the sound of it, Mazzulla will be in Boston for a very, very long time, and after that, he’ll fade off into the distance.

When did Knicks try to steal Joe Mazzulla?

The Knicks beat the Celtics in the playoffs last year, but after getting eliminated by the Indiana Pacers in the Eastern Conference finals, they fired their head coach at the time, Tom Thibodeau.

According to Stein, who put out some reporting on the Knicks’ offseason coaching search, they attempted to get ahold of Mazzulla over the summer in an attempt to poach him from Boston.

“Yet it has also been whispered that the Knicks likely did some backchannel exploration to determine if there was any pathway to pursue Boston's Joe Mazzulla,” Stein wrote. “There obviously was not … and then the Celtics extended Mazzulla's contract in August.”

Stein also reported that Mazzulla’s extension with the Celtics, which he inked in August, is believed to be a six-year deal: “Terms were not formally announced on Mazzulla's new pact beyond the Celtics terming it a multiyear contract extension, but there is a belief in coaching circles the new deal is a six-year pact, along the lines of the six-year pact that current Celtics president of basketball operations Brad Stevens initially signed to be Boston's coach when he left the college game in July 2013.”

The Knicks eventually signed Mike Brown to be their new head coach, but before that, they tried to steal a bunch of other current head coaches in addition to pursuing Mazzulla. Among them were Jason Kidd, Ime Udoka, Billy Donovan, Chris Finch, and Quin Snyder.

Ultimately, all of those pursuits failed, and the Knicks landed on Brown.

All the while, Mazzulla is seemingly settling in to a long career with the Celtics. He doesn’t want to be anywhere else.