BOSTON — Soon after suspending head coach Ime Udoka for the 2022-23 season, the Celtics will now convert to assistant Joseph Mazzulla to consider above a workforce that was two wins absent from a title last time.
Boston will reportedly elevate Mazzulla to head coach adhering to Udoka’s stunning suspension Thursday night time. ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski was very first to report the go.
Mazzulla is just 34 decades outdated — two decades younger than Celtics forward Al Horford.
A Rhode Island indigenous, Mazzulla received 3 point out championships at Bishop Hendricken Substantial School in Warwick. He was inducted into the school’s Hall of Fame in 2018.
He then played 4 sturdy decades of school basketball at West Virginia. Mazzulla was a sophomore on the Mountaineers workforce that upset the 2-seeded Duke Blue Devils in the second-spherical of the 2008 NCAA Match, and right after red-shirting with a shoulder harm in 2009, he aided guide West Virginia to the Last 4 in 2010 as a team captain.
He did run into authorized trouble at West Virginia with a pair of incidents that included liquor. Mazzulla was charged with underage consuming and fighting with law enforcement at a Pittsburgh Pirates game in 2008, and was arrested for domestic battery in 2009 right after he allegedly grabbed a female by the neck at a bar. He has not been charged with any other incidents considering that.
Mazzulla has been in coaching considering the fact that graduating from school, initially serving as an assistant coach at Division 2’s Glenville Point out and Fairmont Point out. Just after a person calendar year as an assistant for the Maine Red Claws in the G League, he was employed as the head coach of Fairmont State, exactly where Mazzulla led the university to a 43-17 history around two seasons on the bench.
Which is when he made the leap to the NBA, becoming a member of Brad Stevens’ employees in Boston as an assistant in 2019. He remained with the Celtics right after Stevens moved to the entrance office and Udoka was hired as head mentor last season. He served as head coach of the Celtics’ Summer months League crew in 2021.
Mazzulla interviewed for the Jazz’s head coaching position about the summer, but Utah employed Celtics bench coach Will Hardy. Mazzulla was established to choose Hardy’s location on Udoka’s bench for the forthcoming time.
Now he’ll be primary a team that has title aspirations adhering to a operate to the NBA Finals very last yr. The Celtics commence instruction camp upcoming week, and will idea off the NBA’s typical year Oct. 18 in opposition to the Philadelphia 76ers.
