What Joe Mazzulla tells Celtics about dealing with criticism

What Joe Mazzulla tells Celtics about dealing with criticism originally appeared on NBC Sports Boston

After leading the Boston Celtics to the 2024 NBA championship, a fired-up Jayson Tatum addressed his critics by asking, ‘What they gonna say now?”

He has since found out that not even a dominant title run can quiet the naysayers.

Tatum was the subject of a heated debate on ex-NBAer Gilbert Arenas’ podcast. During the discussion, former NBA guard Brandon Jennings called Tatum the “softest superstar in Celtics history.”

The criticism clearly got to Tatum, who responded with an Instagram post. C’s coach Joe Mazzulla addressed the issue in vintage Mazzulla fashion the next day on 98.5 The Sports Hub’s Zolak & Bertrand.

Mazzulla spoke on it again before Friday’s game against the Sacramento Kings, shedding light on what he tells his players about dealing with the noise even after winning a championship.

“I think there’s a lot of examples around sports that kind of humble you,” Mazzulla said. “You see people lose and and go through difficult times where they’re getting criticized and then two months later they win, and then it’s like, ‘Oh, look at it.’ And then you see situations where people win and then how many coaches — Dwane Casey got let go after winning Coach of the Year, two or three coaches were in the Finals.

“So there’s a lot of examples that keep you humble in sports to where you just can’t get caught up on the emotional roller coaster of you’re either untouchable or you’re, you know, there. So I think the most important thing is just maintain a level of perspective that regardless of what you do, there’s always going to be a good and bad to it. And if you just live in the space of you do what you do, that’s kind of how you have to go about it.”

Whether it’s praise or criticism, Mazzulla would prefer the C’s ignore any outside noise. He used past critiques of a former NBA “great” to show his team just how little the opinions of others matter.

“I don’t want them to believe all the positive stuff or the negative stuff because both of them can be detrimental and neither one of them are really that important,” he said. “I think what they think of themselves, what I think of them, what the team thinks, what the people who are closest to them think — but if somebody came out and said he was the toughest of all time, that could be just as detrimental if you decide to believe that and don’t use it to your advantage, right?

“So just don’t put too much weight in the praise or the criticism because at the end of the day, it’s fleeting. You gotta have perspective. But one thing I did do for them is I gave them a timeline of a certain player in the past’s career who was great and I gave them a timeline of like, ‘Here’s what was being said about him in the beginning, here’s what was being said about in the middle, here’s what was being said about in the end,’ and it was comical at the bouncing back and forth of the opinions. But you try to just shed perspective because every player has gone through something. If you want to be great, you’re gonna go through that. So as long as you maintain a level of perspective on that, it’s the most important thing.”

Would Mazzulla be willing to share which player he used an example?

“No, but it’s hysterical to watch what people said that different timelines of his career,” he answered. “And if they could be held accountable for those, that’d be great.”

Tatum and the Celtics will look to silence their detractors yet again when they return home to take on the red-hot Kings. Sacramento enters on a five-game win streak.