Big Joe got the hardware.
Joe Mazzulla is the 2025-26 NBA Coach of the Year, and honestly, that is hilarious because he might be the one coach in the league who would rather talk about wolf packs, UFC pressure, shark attacks, or transition defense than stand around celebrating an individual coaching award.
But he earned it.
Mazzulla led the Celtics to a 56-26 record, the No. 2 seed in the Eastern Conference, and kept Boston near the top of the league even with Jayson Tatum unavailable for most of the season. That’s not normal. That’s not “hey, good job keeping the bus on the road.” That’s real coaching.
And the voters knew it too. Mazzulla received 62 first-place votes and finished with 392 total points, beating out Detroit’s J.B. Bickerstaff and San Antonio’s Mitch Johnson.
So yeah.
The guy who basically called the award stupid won the award.
That’s peak Joe.
Mazzulla has never been the “please clap for me” type. He previously dismissed Coach of the Year as “stupid” and said he wished it was more like a Staff of the Year award, which honestly makes sense. That’s such a Joe answer. Win a major award and immediately turn it into a lesson about the group, the process, and why nobody should be getting too comfortable.
That’s why Celtics fans love this lunatic.
He’s not normal, and that is the point.
This is the same guy who coaches basketball like he’s preparing a small army for psychological warfare. He’s intense, weird, obsessive, and somehow exactly what this franchise needed after the chaos of the Ime Udoka situation, the pressure of the Tatum-Brown window, and the constant Boston noise machine trying to turn every bad quarter into a federal investigation.
And now he’s officially got the Red Auerbach Trophy.
That part matters too. Mazzulla is only the fourth Celtics coach to win Coach of the Year, joining Red Auerbach, Tom Heinsohn, and Bill Fitch. He’s also the first Celtics coach to win it since Fitch in 1979-80, which is insane for a franchise with this much history.
That’s real Boston basketball company.
And at 37 years old, Mazzulla became the youngest Coach of the Year winner since Phil Johnson in 1974-75.
That is wild.
Because remember how people talked about Joe early on? Like he was just the emergency guy. Like the Celtics were so loaded anyone could coach them. Like he was a placeholder. Like he was too weird, too young, too intense, too much of a quote-machine psycho to actually be the long-term guy.
Then he won a title in 2024.
Then he followed it up by coaching this year’s group to 56 wins without Tatum for a huge chunk of the season.
At some point, you have to stop acting like this is accidental.
The numbers back it up too. Boston ranked near the top of the league on both sides, finishing second in offensive rating, fourth in defensive rating, and with an elite net rating. That’s not vibes. That’s structure.
That is the part people miss with Joe.
The weird quotes get the clicks. The “stupid award” stuff gets the jokes. The orca/wolf/violence metaphors get everybody laughing. But underneath all that, the dude can coach his ass off.
He gets buy-in.
He builds identity.
He makes role players feel like they’re part of something bigger than just standing in the corner waiting for a kickout.
And most importantly, he does not let the Celtics drift into soft basketball.
That’s the Big Joe standard.
Now, was the season perfect? No. The playoff exit still stings. Nobody is pretending the Coach of the Year award erases postseason frustration. But regular season awards are regular season awards, and in the regular season, Mazzulla did one hell of a job keeping the Celtics together when this year could have gone sideways fast.
A lot of coaches would have made excuses.
Joe made the Celtics keep working.
That’s why this award is deserved, even if he hates it.
The funniest part is that Mazzulla probably looks at this trophy and thinks, “Cool. Now everyone shut up and get better.”
That’s the energy.
No parade for the coach. No self-congratulation tour. No soft little victory lap.
Just Big Joe, probably somewhere watching fight film, drinking coffee, and thinking about how to turn a 56-win team into something meaner.
Final takeaway?
Joe Mazzulla won Coach of the Year because he earned it.
He held the Celtics together without Tatum for most of the year, kept Boston elite, won 56 games, grabbed the No. 2 seed, and put his name next to Red Auerbach, Tommy Heinsohn, and Bill Fitch in Celtics history.
He may hate the award.
He may think it should go to the staff.
He may not want anyone talking about it for more than five minutes.
But Big Joe got his flowers.
And honestly, the fact he doesn’t even want the damn flowers makes it even more Celtics.