Boston • Will Hardy and Joe Mazzulla spent the 2021-22 season as coworkers, both highly regarded assistant coaches on Ime Udoka’s Boston Celtics staff.
So highly regarded that, at the end of that season, both men were finalists to replace Quin Snyder as head coach of the Utah Jazz.
Ahead of Friday’s game at TD Garden between the Jazz and Celtics, Mazzulla — who would wind up getting Boston’s top job months after not landing Utah’s — was asked what he learned from the experience of interviewing with the Jazz.
“Never wear a suit ever again,” he quipped. “I wore a suit, and I was the most uncomfortable. I’m really pissed that I did that.”
More seriously, he reflected upon how one response he gave to Utah’s decision-makers perhaps proved a sliding-door moment.
“I kind of felt like in that interview, they asked me a particular question that I wasn’t quite ready to answer,” Mazzulla said. “It was like, ‘Do you think, at a young age, you can run an organization?’ And I knew I could, but I didn’t give off the answer that I needed to give to get the job.”
(Those two are currently the youngest head coaches in the NBA, with Hardy turning 36 years old in just over two weeks, and Mazzulla following suit in five more months.)
Mazzulla was subsequently asked if the Jazz had told him they found his answer lacking or if it was just something he intuited.
“I just felt that. I could just feel,” he said. “Not that they were wrong in that, by the way. They made the right choice in hiring Will, I want to be clear on that.”
So you’re not as good a coach as Will? a reporter jokingly asked.
“No,” Mazzulla replied earnestly.
Just days before their 2022 training camp, the Celtics suspended Udoka for at least the 2022-23 season for violations of the team’s code of conduct.
When Mazzulla got an interview for what was then an interim promotion, he found his prior experience with the Jazz helpful this time around.
“Going through that process helped me articulate my strengths and what I think I can do,” he said. “That was a good process to have to go through.”
After Mazzulla finished his pregame media session Friday, Hardy was asked how he handled that same query in his interview with the Jazz.
“I don’t know how that specific answer went — I didn’t get a report card after,” he replied dryly. “But I just tried to be as honest as possible, like, ‘I don’t have all the answers right now.’ I think when you’re young as a coach going into those interviews, there’s no reason to hide from those facts: Yes, I am young; yes, I’ve never been a head coach, but I think sometimes there’s strength in that. I’m not a finished product, I’m not rigid, I’m not walking in with a giant notebook that’s like, ‘Here’s my program, take it or leave it.’ I still don’t think I have all the answers.”
He would add that, as a mid-30s person now in his second year of his first-ever head coaching job, there’s still very much an acclimation process going on.
But he also feels like that’s a good thing.
“Leading an organization is hard, being in this seat is different than being an assistant in a thousand ways,” Hardy said. “You feel everything that happens, good or bad, in a very different way than when you’re an assistant. You feel a responsibility for not only the players, but you feel a responsibility for the people that you’ve hired and work with you every day.
“It’s something I’m still getting used to. I kind of hope I never fully get used to it,” he continued. “I think some of that anxiety or stress keeps you sharp — or it keeps me sharp. I do OK with some of that; you obviously don’t want to overload it, but it keeps me in the moment and keeps me on the next thing.”
The reflection bit over with, he naturally had to revert to sarcasm at the end.
“Maybe I’ll go back and ask [CEO Danny Ainge] what he thought of my answer,” Hardy said. “It’ll give us something to talk about.”
