Final Saturday, a reporter requested Sam Hauser of the Boston Celtics how coach Joe Mazzulla is totally different from different coaches he is performed for.
“I might simply say he is like acquired a novel strategy to the sport,” Hauser mentioned. “He pulls issues from, like, soccer groups, pulls issues from killer whales and the way they go about discovering meals and prey, issues like that, and he ties it into the sport of basketball.”
It’s no secret that Mazzulla loves and research soccer. The game has knowledgeable how Mazzulla sees basketball, notably when it comes to the transition recreation and creating benefits.
Killer whales, although? That was new.
Sadly, when a reporter requested Hauser to broaden on that a part of his reply, the reserve ahead mentioned, “I will let him. I do not actually know tips on how to describe it.” However that wasn’t the tip of the story. In a characteristic printed Tuesday, Robert O’Connell of the Wall Road Journal acquired some solutions.
To Mazzulla, it is all about teamwork. Killer whales, aka orcas, hunt in pods, circle their prey and coordinate their assaults. The Celtics watched the very smart hunters work as a collective unit.
“It might be something,” Boston guard Derrick White mentioned after Sport 2, per the WSJ. “A number of ocean, numerous nature. He loves that predator-prey way of life.”
Mazzulla additionally confirmed the gamers clips of a cackle of hyenas killing a wildebeest.
“Man, was it exhausting to observe,” heart Luke Kornet informed the WSJ. “I will inform you what, Mom Nature…”
After taking a second to ponder what the workforce was supposed to remove from the video, Kornet mentioned, “It was actually about working collectively and making an attempt to deliver the enemy to a standstill.”
This is not terribly totally different from what Kornet mentioned in regards to the Celtics watching soccer clips. He used the phrase “it may simply look stunning” within the soccer reply, although, and it sounds just like the hyenas-versus-wildebeest scene was something however.
Mazzulla, who went with MMA as his basketball parallel earlier than Boston’s Sport 3 victory on Wednesday — he mentioned needed to point out that “the nearer you assume you’re to beating somebody is the nearer you’re to getting your ass kicked” — is a artistic coach, each when it comes to his X’s and O’s and, clearly, his motivational strategies. I am not going to say that the Celtics are one win away from a championship as a result of they’ve seen killer whales and hyenas on the hunt, however they positive have been extra tied collectively on each ends than the Dallas Mavericks on this sequence. Perhaps one thing seeped in.
