Boston Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla has officially been named the NBA Coach of the Year for the 2025-26 season, the league announced on Wednesday. Mazzulla receives the recognition after leading the Celtics to a 56-win campaign, in a year where the external expectations for the team were nonexistent.
Boston Celtics' Joe Mazzulla has won the 2025-26 NBA Coach of the Year award.
— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) May 26, 2026
Mazzulla now joins Bill Fitch as the sole Celtic coaches to have earned the honor. Fitch took home the award in 1980.
If you asked the Rhode Island native, though, he’d tell you the award shouldn’t be about him. It should be about the players first.
“I think he just understands that he can't do without us, he can't do without his coaching staff, he can’t do it without everybody in this building,” Derrick White explained back in April. “So he kind of feels weird to get all the credit for it. I think that's like for a lot of us. I understand that it takes everybody in this building, everybody in this organization, to make us successful, to make us go out there and play the way we do.”
Mazzulla, in fact, did tell the media that the players are the ones who go out and win games on a nightly basis, not the coaching staff.
“At the end of the day, I haven’t made one basket all year,” he told reporters at the Auerbach Center last month. “Our staff hasn’t made a basket. We haven’t gotten a block. We haven’t ran back on defense. We didn’t play in a back-to-back. We didn’t have to play hurt. We haven’t really done s---. So, if you don’t have the guys to be able to put you in position, it doesn’t really matter. I’m just grateful. The greatest gift I have is I get to coach a bunch of guys that care about winning and being a part of the culture that we have.”
Though he disputes it, Joe Mazzulla did a great job maximizing the Celtics' talent
Though they haven’t made a basket or gotten a block, Mazzulla’s staff still played a huge role in the team’s success. The man in charge went as far as to say the award should actually be changed to “Staff of the Year” to ensure all receive credit where it’s deserved.
It is just that, too -- deserved.
Mazzulla and his team of coaches did a great job motivating players, figuring out how to best maximize each’s strengths, and winning games in the face of a sea of doubters. His attention to detail and confidence in his team’s ability trickles down to the players and beyond, according to Payton Pritchard.
"Joe just does an excellent job of holding everybody to a high standard and work ethic and showing up every day and just putting that time in,” Pritchard said. “It doesn't matter if it’s training staff, weight room. Everybody knows their job and they come in on a high level and they produce every day. Even like the player development staff, they're on-court probably more than us working their butt off. It definitely starts with Joe and the expectations he has and the standard that he holds people to."
Celtics' playoff collapse will be synonymous with Mazzulla's recognition
As much as Mazzulla wanted to avoid the recognition before, that feeling was likely multiplied after Boston’s 3-1 series collapse in the first round of the playoffs. Questionable decisions from the former West Virginia standout dominated discourse surrounding the Celtics’ first playoff defeat to the Philadelphia 76ers in 44 years.
Many fans and media members blamed Mazzulla for straying away from embracing the team’s depth, the very thing that’d helped them succeed throughout the season. Even so, talent, not coaching, was to blame for that, according to Celtics president Brad Stevens.
“I thought the coaches did a really good job of helping guys all get better, but there's no step to take,” Stevens shared in early May. “Whether you're in my shoes and or you're in any of our support staff shoes, or if you're in our coaches shoes, or if you're in our players shoes, we got to get better. So that's going to be the charge and the focus. So we'll figure out how best to do that.”
Unfortunately, the postseason disappointment will justifiably be the first thing that fans remember when they think of this season and Mazzulla’s Coach of the Year status -- not the path that led them there.
Add us as a preferred source on Google