BOSTON – Emmanuel Mazzulla told his father he could use his jiujitsu skills to beat his opponent with his back turned because he was confident he was better. Boston Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla immediately responded by telling his young son that you always should respect your opponent and “fight with fight” to win, no matter your ability.

Forward Jayson Tatum, guard Jaylen Brown and the talented Celtics are the favorites to become the first repeat champions since the Golden State Warriors in 2017 and 2018. Even so, Mazzulla is ensuring that his Celtics have the mentality to fight with fight against every foe entering the upcoming season that begins Tuesday night against the New York Knicks.

“It’s same thing with basketball. This is where the sustaining success comes in,” Mazzulla told Andscape. “You have to play the game knowing you’re the best but knowing that your opponent could beat you at any time. That’s fighting, that’s life, that’s basketball. That to me is what coaching and playing and being a part of the Celtics is. You have to know you’re the best, but you have to know you didn’t lose at any time.

“And too many times confidence is lost because you’re like, ‘Oh, I can’t think of myself as the best because that’s pride.’ It’s not pride. If you’re good, you’re good. It’s how you handle that. And so, what my son said was, ‘I can give an opponent my back if I think I’m better than you.’ No, everyone’s better than you, but you’re also the best. And can you live in that space.

“We have to know we have one of the best chances to win. One of them. There are a bunch of teams that have a chance. Can we play with the confidence and the humility to know we’re really good, but with the humility to know that we can lose at any time? That’s it.”

Mazzulla and the Celtics will celebrate their 2024 NBA championship and raise their 18th title banner Tuesday night. While Mazzulla, 36, who is entering his third year as coach is focused on this season, he has a lot of interests that help him mentally prepare for this season and to relax away from the game. The devout Catholic ends his days at home at his upstairs chapel, is a proud New Englander who has a painting signed by former New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick hanging in his cinema room and plays chess with a chess master friend. Mazzulla is learning Italian and Spanish. He has a jiujitsu room and had off-season surgery due to the sport. He starts his days at home with a 40-degree ice bath and adores his time with his wife Camai, son Emmanuel, and stepson Michael.

With the championship bringing more notoriety, Mazzulla is also uncomfortable with growing celebrity and strongly prefers that the focus is on his Celtics players, who have a lot of respect for how he works with them.

“I love Joe to death. I admire the way he is really coming into his own,” Tatum said. “He truly does things his own way. He is not going to be someone he isn’t. He believes in us and he works with us. He’s not talking down on us. We’re all in this relationship together.”

The following is an exclusive Q&A with Mazzulla in which he talked to Andscape at his home Oct. 10 about the expectations for the Celtics to compete for a title every year, Tatum and Brown’s offseason challenges, why he doesn’t feel pressure with such a high-profile coaching job, why he is a Christian first, and more.

What are your thoughts about opening night, putting the championship banner up? I know you want to look forward, but it’s still a night of celebration.

It’s a tough one because I think it’ll hit different when we’re in the Garden where there is a [opponent]. Playing in the Garden is the ultimate compliment. You see those [Celtics banners]. They’ve been there a while. There’s a lot of them. And so, to be a part of something that has done that, I think it’ll hit us. It’ll test us mentally. It’s a great opportunity for us. That game decides nothing from the standpoint of where we’re at as a team.

These guys have come into this training camp and started from zero. They’ve started from scratch. So, whatever happens at night is not a by-product of our mindset. The guys are ready to attack another NBA season together.

Banner 19. Do you guys talk about it?

There will never be a year where winning a championship isn’t the most important thing. So, there’s no sense in talking about 19. To me, it’s like there’s 10 teams that have the luxury, the expectation, the responsibility of coming into a season thinking they have a chance to win a championship. Fortunately for us, that’s us every year. That is every year I’ve been here. It’s almost every year the Celtics have been in existence. So, it’s not about Banner 19, about coming in on the first day and every day knowing what the standard and the expectation is. But it’s about what the process towards that is every single year we’re here, it’s the win championship. It’ll always be that way.

The years that we don’t, we got to figure out what we need to do better. The years that we do, we got to figure out what we need to do better. And so that’s it. We are not running from it. It’s just it’s every year. It’s every single year. And what’s crazy is we’ve only won two since 2008. So, there’s more out there again.

How have you handled all the noise around Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown? Dallas Mavericks head coach Jason Kidd starts a controversy during the NBA Finals saying Brown is the Celtics’ best player. Both of them couldn’t be NBA Finals MVP. Tatum, Holiday and White go to the Olympics to play for USA, but Brown doesn’t get invited after getting MVP. And then Tatum plays sparingly for USA at the Paris Olympics. What were your thoughts on all that and did you try to guide them?

Isn’t that beautiful? That’s just life. I don’t try to guide them. I just try to love them the way that I would love them, don’t try to be something that I’m not. Those two guys, I’ve said this multiple times, there isn’t a greater gift an NBA coach could ask for than having those two guys. They’re superstars. They love being coached. They love being worked. They’re the highest-character guys. You’re never going to get better than those two guys. I would go to war for them. I tell them all the time, ‘I would do anything for you except lose my wife and kids.’

So, when you see them go through certain things like that, this is perfect. We just won. And you have these two guys both not getting what they want. What’s better than that? When we have years left together — I don’t know, one, two, four, five — you are not going to always get what you want. That’s just the way the world works. Who are we if we always get what we want? So, to love them in that way and just give them the perspective, I feel like that is why I’m here. That to me is bigger than giving them the right game plan. And I’m grateful to them because they allow me to help them, coach them. They’ve let me into their life. They’ve let me into their career, and I’m grateful for that.

Can you talk about your trip to the Paris Olympics and your purpose with your Celtics playing for USA Basketball?

I went there for multiple reasons. To see the three guys. I want to see them win a gold medal, and I got to go to Paris. I got to take my wife. Whether [Tatum] was starting or not, I was going. I was going to see all three of them.

Did you give them each counsel during the Olympics?

No. I just like to hang out with them and listen. I went to the Brazil game, and then we hung out in the hotel lobby after. And again, they’re all different. Each interaction is different. My relationship with Jrue is different than my relationship with Derrick, which is different than my relationship with Jayson. It’s different than my relationship with Jaylen. So, each guy needs different things from coaching. So, I had different interactions with each guy, but I was going anyway.

What was different last season than the season before? Why did the Celtics win a championship?

I don’t think it was me. It was just time. Jaylen and Jayson, they just get better every single year. And you saw that last season. I felt like they took ownership of, ‘It’s our time.’ They took ownership of that. I felt like Derrick’s development, it was the right timing. Al, timing. Getting Jrue and KP [Porziņģis], timing. Having Payton [Pritchard], Sam [Hauser] and Luke [Kornet] for three years, timing. Getting X [Xavier Tillman], timing. You can’t look at it and be like, this is why we won this [season], and this is why we lost [last season]. It’s a culmination of a bunch of things that are just going on.

And now we’re in this space where we’re just going after greatness together as an organization, whatever that may look like. It doesn’t mean that we have to win every single year. It means can we sustain high level success if we have an opportunity to do that. Everything is timing. We were up two games to one against the [Golden State] Warriors [in the 2022 NBA Finals]. It wasn’t like it came out of nowhere. We’ve been knocking on the door for five years. [Former Celtics coach] Brad [Stevens] brought the team to Eastern Conference Finals Game 7. [Former Celtics coach] Ime [Udoka] brings the team to the Finals. So, it was just a culmination of time, and sometimes it just comes together.

What does it mean to be able to have won a championship for the Celtics just like Red Auerbach, Bill Russell, K.C. Jones and Doc Rivers have? What does it mean to be in that room now? Does it feel good?

No, it doesn’t feel good. I still feel a level of not worthy, which I think is a healthy thing. When you start to think that, then the danger comes in on and off the court. So, it doesn’t feel good. You know how you felt when you did something good as a teenager and your parents say they’re proud of you? I felt that. I feel like I’ve been entrusted with this responsibility of this organization, and you did what you had to do.

There is literally a responsibility here to win championships. That’s it. And to run a high-level championship organization. It’s your only responsibility. And when you take ownership of a responsibility and you deliver a lot of responsibility, you’re kind of like, ‘Thank you.’ So, I almost have a sense of gratitude to them because they set the stage for us to allow us to do this. Because winning one here wouldn’t be anything if they didn’t do it. If it wasn’t for them, this wouldn’t be the job that it is. This wouldn’t be the team that it is. And so, I feel that. I feel like saying thank you.

For somebody who’s from here, what does Banner 18 mean?

What does it mean? Nothing now. It will 20 years from now. It will down the line. But if you were just happy with that one, you should have quit. You should have retired. Sometimes when people ask me about that, they think I forget. I’m not forgetting that one. I’m just not attached to it. And being attached to too much a success or failure, if you stay attached to a result or an experience for too long, it’s going to hinder the opportunity to take advantage of the next experience or opportunity that you have. I’m not downgrading it. I’m not saying that it’s not important. What I’m saying is I’m not attached to it because we have more work to do.

You replaced Ime Udoka after he coached the team to the NBA Finals in 2022. You never had been an NBA head coach before. Did you have any hesitation about taking the job?

No. What I going to say? No. I don’t really see pressure. I understand why people say that. What pressure is there? What’s the worst thing that could happen? I get fired, who cares? I’m alive, I’m healthy. I got my wife. I got my kids. It’s not pressure. So, I don’t understand when people always say, ‘Oh, man, it’s so much pressure.’ No, it’s not. I know this is where I’m supposed to be. God brought us here. I know that for a fact.

He blessed us with this job. If we win, it’s because he wanted us to. If we lose, it’s because he wanted us to. If I keep my job for 10 years, he wanted me here. We get fired after three or four, it’s because he has a different plan for us. I don’t see where that’s a thing. Pressure is a worldly, man-made thing that people say to create anxiety. You’re either going to do it or you’re not. It’s just that simple.

When you think about the 2022-23 NBA season, not getting back to the Finals, falling short, how much motivation did you get from that? What did you learn from the season before your first season?

So, it wasn’t necessarily as much motivation as it was having a clear compass. That [season] gave me a compass. I’m very fortunate. Not many people get to take over the job that they worked at as an assistant for the guy they worked for. That doesn’t happen. The first [season] was a science experiment. It was like, ‘Can we win? But can I also gather as much data as possible about our environment?’ So after we lose, it was like, OK, I got four years of data, three years of data as an assistant. I’m have core DNA of this organization. I have a year of interim head coach data. I can’t wait to get into the lab and figure out how I’m going to use this data to work on generating a formula for an environment of how we’re going to go about doing things as an organization.

It was a win-win. Not many times are you able to be in a win-win. If we won, we win. If we lost, I still won because I got the data to know how we make sure we don’t do it. And so that was it. And so that whole offseason was just taking the data that I had from the organization over the years and putting them into three different buckets. What are we going to change now? What do the players want? What do I want? What do we want to be down the line, but we can’t change yet? And once we were able to put things in all these buckets, then we were able to kind of be like, ‘OK, here are the procedures to changing what we need to change now. Here’s what the players want, because they’re the most important. How can we do that? Here’s what needs to be changed over the course of time, but we can’t do that yet. So, we’re going to put procedures in place to get that.

How has life been different since you’ve become an NBA championship coach in Boston?

People treat you differently. You have different opportunities because of that. But I think for me, the focal point was how do you stay grounded. How do you stay grateful? How do you try to keep that in perspective? Try to spend as much time with my family as I can. It was great thanking all the different people, whether it was the organization, whether it was the city, whether it was the people from my hometown, whether it was the people in my life that poured into me leadershipwise, and then just kind of growing.

So, I had right knee surgery on July 1. A full repair of the meniscus. And it was great. It was probably the best thing that happened to me this summer because it forced me to have to work for something. And so, coming off of a win, there is a tendency to sit in it or enjoy it. But I had to learn to walk again. I was on crutches for 14 days. I was wearing a knee brace for 2½, three months. I had to do rehab two, three hours a day, so it gave me something to work at. It was like I had to start from one. So, it was a lot of fun.

It was fun?

It was blast. I had a blast. I had physical therapy three times a day. The first week, my wife, I’m fully dependent on her. So, it just teaches you the humility of even when you think you’re something, the simplest thing like walking gets taken away from you, and you have to be able to rely on others and you have to be able to adjust. So, it was a great perspective shift for me.

During the 2024 NBA Finals, you were asked by Yahoo! Sports senior NBA writer Vincent Goodwill about the importance of having two Black head coaches in the NBA Finals for the first time since 1975. You responded by saying, ‘I wonder how many of those have been Christian coaches.’ You didn’t expound on the answer at the time. Can you do it now?

It’s such a big environment, and the most important thing at that time was playing basketball. But at the same time, it was important to know where my identity was. But you’re right. I actually ended up following up with [Goodwill] I think after the next game or the game after. And so, for me, I had to say what I had to say because that’s most important to me. Not that I don’t think race is important, I think that’s very important around the world. But I think when you’re an individual or a family, you choose the lens in which you want to look through life. And regardless of how people want to view us, my family and I look at the lens that we’re Christians first before anything else, and that’s just where our identity lies.

And that doesn’t mean that other people are wrong and how they look at it. But when I felt like he asked that question, he was assuming that my identity is in, not assuming, but it was like I wanted to control the narrative of what my identity was of being in the Finals as a coach. I didn’t want to be in a question of it was two Black coaches because it’s not, we’re two people and we’re just Christian. I’m a Christian first. That’s just kind of how I wanted to answer. At the same time, it was about winning. And I didn’t want to expound on that at that particular moment because I didn’t want to take away from the fact that we got to get ready for the next game.

And the point was also hard because it’s a little bit of both, right? It’s about basketball, but it’s also the biggest stage of the NBA. And so, people want to get the message or the story that is going to hit home while the playoffs are going on, and you have to fight the battle. At the end of the day, we got three weeks, four weeks, whatever it is, to lock in on what’s most important. I said what I said because that’s important for our family, but I didn’t expound because it was about playing basketball for the Celtics at the time.

What’s the origin of your Christianity?

I grew up in an Italian Catholic neighborhood. I don’t know how deep you want to go into that, but I became a better person once I realized the unity and not the divisiveness of what we’re trying to do in the world today. So, yeah, I’m a Christian, I’m a Catholic, but that doesn’t mean I can’t learn from [other religions]. We just got back from Abu Dhabi and I went to the Abrahamic house and learned from Judaism, learning from Islam, those are what makes you better. Not being divisive, like, ‘Oh, they don’t believe in this or ideology and this is different.’ No. When I learned about Judaism, I became a better Christian. What I learned from Islam has made me a better Christian. So, it’s that unity.

And so, I’m Catholic, but I was Christian, but I went to Catholic school my whole life, K through 12. I grew up 600 feet from a church. And my dad, my family, my parents just made sure that that was going to be the foundation of what we had. And when I went to college, I lost that. And I wasn’t the person that I wanted to be when I was in college. And I think, to me, it’s because I lost my faith foundation and I wasn’t happy with the person that I was in some of that time. And so, I had to recommit, reestablish, reconnect to who I wanted to be as a person.

And then you started to have a family, and it’s like, ‘OK, what is our marriage going to be based on? I’m only doing this once.’ You start to have kids and it’s like, ‘OK, how do you want to raise your kids?’ And there’s no right, wrong or way. It’s just like this is how we chose to do it. So that’s just kind of how it was foundationally for my parents. And then I always had great people around me spiritually, I had great people athletically, and I feel like that’s kind of why I’m where I’m at today.

At what point after college did you lean back into Christianity?

Probably right after, because I was going through a small identity crisis because every college player, especially one of the Power 5 schools, thinks they’re going to the NBA. I was shifting from Joe Mazzulla, point guard, West Virginia to Joe Mazzulla, Division II assistant coach who has never coached a day in his life. And so, you moved to this small town and you’re in a new identity. It was at that point where I decided that my identity is not going to be in sports. It’s got to be in [Christianity] because I don’t know where this is going to take me. But when I was in a small identity crisis, I wanted to make that decision to make sure that it was in Christ first.

Do you have a daily routine in terms of reading or praying, or is it hard to have one because of your job?

One of the coolest things about this summer was people’s freedom, excitement, I don’t know what you want to call it, but their openness to sharing about them, that was cool. And we’re getting ready to go to the parade and the Celtics sent a driver to pick us up at the house. The driver hands me this bag that includes a devotional with a handwritten note in it. And so, I made a promise that I was going to read it every day for the next year because this person shared his life, shared what was important to him. That was cool.

That was probably one of the coolest things that maybe I haven’t talked about enough other than people sharing about them. I usually read it in the mornings and spend time in the chapel, but it’s been great having this one with me. I know it came from someplace cool. I always remember the day that I started. I started it on June 18, and so I really appreciate that.

So, from maybe that question in the Finals, do you think people got more curious and interested in your faith and your depth?

Two years ago, when we were in Game 7 [of the Eastern Conference finals], I remember I think Gary Washburn asked me a question, and I was like, ‘You only hear about people thanking God when they win.’ And so, I made sure I did it when we were down 3-0, I don’t remember exactly what it was. But when you win, it just makes people much more comfortable. And that’s the whole goal. The goal isn’t really to win, it’s to share the kingdom and to grow the kingdom. And so, if God’s going to give me this opportunity to achieve this, we have to make sure the right things come from it. And the right things came from it, the people that I’ve been able to connect with. I really appreciate that.

You mentioned how you’re Christian first. But I assume that doesn’t mean you don’t have any pride in being Italian or being African American? I wanted to clarify that as well.

Sure. My mother was African American. You grow up in a biracial home in the late ’90’s, early 2000s. My mother was from Los Angeles, California. I spent a lot of time with them in the summers growing up. But she came here by herself and left her family there. And so, I got to see them in the summers. But we grew up in a predominantly Italian neighborhood because that’s just where my dad was from. So, the tension of being biracial is so cool because you want to learn from both and you want to have both.

But people are always going to try to put you in a box. People are always going to try to make you decide. Are you one or the other? And sometimes people decide for you. And so, I got to a point where I was like, I’m not letting people decide for me. This is what I’m at I am. At the same time, I reaped the benefits of both of what my parents gave me, and I’m really grateful for that.

What was the demographics of where you grew up and how did that affect you?

My environment was diverse. I grew up in a predominantly Italian neighborhood, but we had a ton of African Americans, but we also had Hispanics, had Cape Verdean. Everyone thinks I’m Cape Verdean because Providence is full of them. My soccer team was full of Hispanics, Portuguese. We grew up in such a diverse area that I’ve never really, I didn’t experience what our people are experiencing now. There wasn’t divisiveness in my area. And so maybe I was naive to the divisiveness that we have in society today and the things that people go through, whether it’s African Americans or other races.

But where I grew up, I didn’t have that. And so, I didn’t see that. I didn’t look at, when I woke up every morning, I didn’t look at the lens of divisiveness. I just looked at the lens of I have, my friend is from here. I got another friend that’s from here. I got my family that’s from here. I’ve got my mom that’s from here.

So, in a lot of ways, you’re probably blessed to live in an environment where racism wasn’t a daily issue, correct?

It wasn’t. And if it was, I wasn’t trained to pay attention to it because it wasn’t something that affected our family. So, I can’t say that wasn’t. I can’t say that to a fact, but I could say that I’m blessed enough to go through life not seeing color. I was part of so many different cultures. I have so many different friends. I remember all my friends’ names were of different cultures. And so, I was very fortunate to be a part of that. But it does hurt you when you see people going through what they’re going through now. Because not everybody has been blessed to live in an environment like that.

One of my favorite memories in NBA Finals history is watching you and your wife walk around the court hours after the Celtics won the title. I feel like that video wasn’t supposed to be get out. What was the story behind that?

That was the best. So, every time we’ve gotten close to winning, I’ve always said she’s got to be the first person I go find. I’m nothing without her. And so, we had a couple chances to win a conference tournament in college. We blew it, had a chance to go to the Finals, blew it. And so, I was praying about that. And I was like, ‘Man, I’m not running out there. I’m going to go shake coach’s hand. I’m going to go find my wife.’ And I would say, I didn’t realize how hard being the head coach of the Celtics was going to be on my wife. And last season, we were at the dinner somewhere and I was like, ‘Damn, this is the first time I looked at a Celtics game from her lens.’ I never did that. I never looked at a game from my wife’s perspective, especially on a road game, sitting there, you’re all by yourself. You have no control over this. You’re seeing us fight for it, and you’re around a bunch of crazy fans and you can’t control your environment. And I was like, ‘Man, this is way harder on her than I thought.’

I found this out just listening to her. So, the playoffs are the best time for our marriage. We’re together every day. She travels everywhere and we’re around each other. And so that moment was a gratitude walk. So, we do a lot of gratitude walks together. We’ve got to fight to stay connected. Our lives are going to become more worldly. We’ve got to stay connected, and there’s nothing more important than what we have right here and our kids. And so, we were talking about kids and our marriage and how are we going to stay connected. And we were going over the different types of forces that were going to attack us as a marriage and as a family. And we were just praying that to be strengthened by this walk. And so, I’m just as proud about that as I am about winning.

We’re naive to social media. We thought we were out there by ourselves. She wanted to do snow angels on the court. She didn’t get a chance to do it. She used to say this stat at the beginning of our marriage that 80% of couples that walk together stay together. And so, we always walk together. And we just continued it there.

I know you’re a big soccer fan and you’re close to Manchester City coach Pep Guardiola. What did Pep tell you about winning a championship and where you go? What advice did you get from him?

Pep is the best. I love that guy. I never asked him about winning a championship. I asked him about sustaining success, because everywhere he’s been, he’s sustained it. And if you take a look at coaches, and if you made a bucket of what gifts a coach needs, you have to manage talent. You have to manage a season. You have to develop players and develop talent. There’s a difference between developing a superstar and developing a rookie. Pep develops superstars. You have to be great tactically.

How many coaches in any sport are the best in all the buckets? He’s one of them, right? So, that is more what we talk about. It’s not about the wins, but how to sustain an organization.

You said Jaylen and Jayson get better every year. How do you get better as a coach?

One of the most important things is your staff. I’m very lucky with the type of people and staff that I have around me. And my staff, each individual, is better than me at one thing. And so, they’re the head coach of that one thing. ‘You’re better than me at this. You’re the head coach of this. I need you to be the head coach of that.’ And so, I really rely on my staff to make me better, because I’m not the smartest guy in the room. They are at each particular thing, and they’re a beast.

Where did you come up with that concept?

Doris Kearns Goodwin wrote Team of Rivals about Abraham Lincoln. When he won the presidency, he hired all the people he beat for his Cabinet. It just makes perfect sense, right? He knew what he was great at, but he knew he needed not necessarily his adversaries, but he needed people that were better than him at certain things in order to have the best presidential Cabinet. It’s a great book. So, when I read that, that’s what a [coaching] staff should be.

I am not reading anything right now. It’s getting close to the season. But this summer I read the book, Winning! by Clive Woodward, the most successful rugby coach in England. He coached England to a Rugby World Cup [championship] for the first time. It was a really good book.

Kobe Bryant used to seek out people that were great in their field to learn from them. Did you take that idea from him?

I was inspired by him because he loved Bruce Lee. He loved soccer. He could speak multiple languages. And I read something where he befriended a music conductor out in California. The thing about a conductor of music, you have to get everybody on the same page. Conducting an orchestra is like coaching an NBA team: All have to play the same tone, but it’s completely different instruments. And growing up in my coaching career, he inspired me to pull from others. Don’t just use basketball to get better. That should be the last thing you do to get better.