Why Joe Mazzulla said that he didn’t enjoy the Celtics’ offseason

"The world tries to keep you attached to your latest success or your latest failure."

Joe Mazzulla basked in the revelry of the Celtics’ 18th championship during the team’s raucous parade through the streets of Boston on June 21.

Despite walking on a torn meniscus in his knee, the Celtics head coach jumped from his duck boat and high-fived fans along the parade route.

Over the summer, the 36-year-old Mazzulla paraded the Larry O’Brien trophy across New England, bringing Boston’s new piece of hardware from the North End to the steps of the Rhode Island State House in Providence.

After he achieved basketball immortality in just his second year as a head coach, one would assume that the entire summer stood as a validating victory lap for Mazzulla.

But the ever-candid and hyper-focused Celtics head coach was blunt on Tuesday when asked about his summer.

“I wouldn’t say I enjoyed the offseason. I enjoyed the parade,” Mazzulla said during the Celtics’ Media Day at the Auerbach Center. “I thought the parade was a rather intense experience, which I loved, and it was a great opportunity to connect with the city.

“One of my goals in being the head coach is making sure we maintain a consistent mindset and a consistent connection to the city of Boston — that chip on your shoulder, the toughness, the expectation to win. So I thought the parade was kind of the culmination of that connection.”

Mazzulla’s ability to stay grounded and focused on the task at hand has stood as a hallmark of his press conferences since taking over as Boston’s head coach.

And sure enough, the enigmatic Mazzulla once again doled out a classic soliloquy when pressed on why he didn’t enjoy the months following Boston’s championship conquest.

“I think attachment is something that you have to be aware of, right? I think one of the challenges of this offseason was detaching from the past and having an understanding of if you’re attached to a success or a failure for too long, that could be really dangerous,” Mazzulla said. “And the world tries to keep you attached to the past.

“The world tries to keep you attached to your latest success or your latest failure, and that’s where people get stuck where they’re in — is attachment. And so it was a balance of, I can’t be attached to this past success. It would be the same as being attached to a past failure.”

Mazzulla and the Celtics were on the opposite end of the spectrum last offseason, having come up short in a crushing Game 7 loss to the Miami Heat in the 2023 Eastern Conference Finals.

The clean slate presented with a new season was a message that Mazzulla echoed last fall. And that mantra seems to be carrying over into this year, even with Boston now donning the crown as the league’s reigning champions.

“How can we detach from that with the understanding of taking the things, the DNA of the things that we need to do to try to go after greatness again,” Mazzulla asked. “And so it’s just a battle of attachment versus detachment. And I think that’s kind of what we’re going to have to be working towards throughout the year.”