Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla believes jiu-jitsu helps him navigate the challenges of life. 'It’s not so much a physical fight as it is a mental fight.” ByJayKing on how the art has shifted Mazaulla's perspective during Boston's championship quest.
Still, for anyone feeling their neck constricted by another human being, panic can enter the equation.
At the gym, with Costa guiding him, that is literal. Elsewhere, Mazzulla believes jiu-jitsu helps him navigate the challenges of life. That’s why on the day the Celticsin September, Mazzulla went searching for an instructor. After seeing the benefits of martial arts training years ago, a lack of time and resources forced him to give up the practice when he initially joined Boston as an assistant coach in 2019.
After realizing it wasn’t a prank, Costa took on what he called the biggest challenge of his career. He had worked with poker players who wanted to use martial arts as a tool to improve in their profession. Mazzulla’s status as the Celtics’ head coach brought with it unique hurdles. Costa knew he could not, under any circumstances, injure Mazzulla in any way. With the sporadic and busy nature of the NBA calendar, scheduling lessons proved difficult at times.
The first lesson addressed Mazzulla’s breathing. Another early lesson involved his posture. Eventually, Mazzulla ditched his habit of chewing gum on the sideline because of the way it impacted his breathing. Every change aimed to improve his mental capacity. When the Celtics went through a tough stretch, Costa put Mazzulla through situations where he was losing and needed to find a fix. After Boston blew a 25-point lead at home to Brooklyn, Costa used the debacle as a way to teach Mazzulla how to better handle momentum swings. As Costa put it, a fighter tends to drop his guard when up big. A key to building on leads is to counterbalance that tendency.
“You don’t see it as a physical fight,” he said. “I think that’s where people get caught up. One of quotes is you’re a technician first. You see every opportunity that you’re around as you’re diagnosing a situation. You’re problem solving — how are you handling it, you’re aware of your surroundings and stuff like that. So, it’s not so much a physical fight as it is a mental fight.”
“I would text him like, ‘All right are we good for tomorrow?’” Mazzulla said. “And he was like, ‘Yup, good for tomorrow,’ and I had no idea that day he had flown from Denver to get back to Boston.”“He came up to me one day and said, ‘I’ve been lying to you. I’ve gotta tell you something,’” Mazzulla said. “I was like, ‘Oh man, are you a felon or something? What is going on here?’ And he said, ‘I don’t live in Boston.’ I was like, ‘All right, like, Maine? New Hampshire?’ He said, ‘Denver.
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