As expected, Joe Mazzulla was named the NBA’s Coach of the Year on Tuesday night, garnering 62 of the 100 first-place votes. The honor was certainly well deserved. It’s a regular-season award, and no coach put his imprint on their team and overachieved like Mazzulla did, leading the ‘gap year’ Celtics to a 56-win season and the 2-seed in the Eastern Conference.
Unfortunately, we all know what happened in the playoffs. Joe and his team dropped the ball, and the Cs got embarrassed in the first round, blowing a 3-1 lead, and losing to the 76ers as huge favorites.
As great as the season was, and as impressive as Mazzulla was, it’s hard to feel great about this award after what we’ve witnessed in the playoffs. Hopefully, there will come a time when we can look back on this achievement and reflect on it fondly, but at the moment, it feels a bit hollow.
COY history is checkered at best
The concerning part is that there’s not a great history of recent COY winners. Dating back to 2017, the only winner of the award who remained with their team for more than a year or two was Mike Budenholzer with the Bucks, who got his team over the mountaintop two years after winning.
But things didn’t work out so well for Dwayne Casey, Nick Nurse, Tom Thibodeau, Monty Williams, or Mike Brown. Mark Daigneault bucked the trend, winning the award in 2024 and following it up with a championship the next season for the Thunder.
Last year’s winner, Kenny Atkinson, led the Cavs to the ECF this season, but his team got swept in pathetic fashion, and it’s safe to say he’s already squarely on the hot seat.
Mazzulla must earn back trust
And sadly, it feels like we’re already there with Joe. He’s obviously not going to lose his job, but the recent playoff shortcomings are glaring holes on an otherwise impeccable resume. He’s still the youngest head coach in the NBA. He has proven to be otherworldly in the regular season. And he won a title in 2024.
Yet still, there’s a lot to be desired, and fans’ confidence is at an all-time low after the most recent debacle. Despite winning this award, Joe is going to have a lot to prove next season, and fair or not, nothing he does during the regular season is really going to matter.
Hopefully, this is a low point, and Joe gets back in the lab, learns from his mistakes, and comes back ready to dominate the postseason next year. Hopefully, he’ll be with the Celtics for many years, and this playoff loss will be a blip on the radar. But if not, and if next season ends with another playoff letdown, the seat is going to be on fire for the 2026 Coach of the Year.
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