Joe Mazzulla to referee Aaron Smith: Introduce yourself to the end of our bench and they can get a free throw. Introduce yourself to our other guys, they’re allowed to shoot free throws.
Joe showing the power of networking
Well now I want to see what a Joe Mazzulla LinkedIn page would look like.
Experience: I coach Certifications: Nobody cares School: I hate questions like this
References: don’t ever ask me this again
Cover sheet is just a middle finger
Likes: ‘The Town’
“A lesson in B2B sales. Kill your competitors! This will elimate the competition. Also watch the town.”
God. The Town is the exact type of movie LinkedIn nutjobs would cite, too, when explaining how to be an alpha, take-no-prisoners type of person. Lol
Experience: Watched The Town at least fifty times
How did networking make me successful in B2B Free Throw Merchanting
Basketball2Basketball
Every post would be a combination of quotes from “The Town” or lessons on how it takes breaking oneself down to rebuild yourself that truly makes greatness
I wonder if he would put his arrests on there
Joe Mazzulla, CEO, Fuck You
recruiting future Herbalife customers
Here’s what coaching in the NBA taught me about B2B sales…
In a different life Joe was a top MLM guy.
They’re swappin linked ins after the game
He’s not wrong(in general.) End of bench and rookies get horrible whistles. Seems like a less aggressive way to complain.
Wait I get it now the refs must think Tatum is an end of bench rookie cuz hes still 19.
Just a fucking kid
Whatever happened there
Another toothpick
It’s sad when they go young like that.
He went to slip and fall school last playoffs
we buried him on a hill overlooking a little river with pine cones all around
When they go????
Never had the makings of a professional athlete
It petered out.
Did I hear a clap?
You get a tech
Tatum is a clapper. Can’t be giving those dirty clappers calls. Only the stars who endlessly whine and bitch directly in the face of officials can get the calls.
this clever petty shit works, unfortunately
I’ve always thought they are more inexperienced at selling contact and getting their calls like the elites do.
It doesn’t seem to happen as much with benched vets for example.
i love his energy
Yeah, it’s easy to see how he has every guy on the roster from 1 to 20 playing so hard every single night.
Isnt there only 14 guys eligible to play per game?
15 permanent slots, 3 two-way slots, plus guys coming in and out of those two-way slots and guys on 10 days, etc. so I rounded to 20.
Must be a Grizzlies fan.
Psycho Joe is here to purify the NBA
I love the way Joe coaches everyone the same stars or end of bench guys, doesn’t matter. Till the very last moment even up 20 Joe is going to be coaching. I know it annoys some people how he will challenge something when the game is almost over and out of reach but I love it. Bet the bench squad does too.
There was a game two years ago where he pissed off the other coach by using a challenge in garbage time and in his press conference he said that everyone on the team deserved to be coached hard. Won me over right there in his first year as HC
*Reserve time, ain’t nothing garbage about it to those players
It’s so true. His job is to coach. It should be a mark of pride for coaches to NOT stop coaching no matter who is in the game or what the situation is. Gotta stay focused. Thats how you build confidence and reps so when the situation really does matter, everyone is ready and on the same page.
Damn I hadn’t seen that or considered that as a response. That’s a guy you wanna play for right there
And that’s how Boston beats the Magic without their Top 6 players…
Top 9
I rate Scheiermann higher than Vuc or Hugo, that’s why I said Top 6…
Scheiermann Top 6 on Maine Red Claws
Scheiermann Top 6 on Boston Celtics <—- You are here
Scheiermann Top 6 in entire NBA
Scheiermann Top 6 of all time
Top 6 what?
Just top 6
It actually makes “garbage time” interesting and cool to watch.
I get really irritated now when I watch a game and a coach is sitting there doing and saying nothing.
There’s ALWAYS teaching moments to be had in games, even in blowouts. And that goes 10x for end of bench guys who don’t play much.
A good coach should always be coaching hard to the last minute, because you never know when you’re going to need a guy to step up.
I like joe. Wish more coached in his style tbh
Coaching the refs too
That’s why we knew this season was gonna go different when everyone was calling for the tank as soon as Tatum went down. Joe would commit Seppuku before he threw a game.
if the game is tight you’re only challenging for a legit reason. If it’s not, then you’ll challenge something to show the player you support and listen to them, and when the call is upheld you sit with them and say “I know we shouldn’t have challenged that, but I want to believe in you” or some shit and it’s effective
I was at this game and that challenge was easily a longshot, but it was the end of the game and because of the small rotation, the guys were absolutely gassed. It was totally a strategic call just to get the guys a breather in my opinion.
Yeah and someday the bench will come out and show everything they learned and people will be “how are they doing this?”
Celtics had a chance to break the 3 point record at the end of the game and he told them not to shoot. I get it but I was mad lol
This how you end up getting 0 free throws forever
Its not like NBA refs are spiteful, thin-skinned pricks.
Oh.
They’ve still got nothing on MLB umpires.
Spiteful, thin-skinned pricks sounds like the justification for every “unwritten rule” in MLB and describes pitchers aptly
I love baseball but this is unfortunately pretty accurate. It’s gotten a tiny bit more forgiving in the last decade though
A tiny bit? You cant purposely hit players anymore without fan bases getting PISSED lol (and I mean neutral fans, not even homers). Not to mention pimping HRs/general celebratios, it’s very different from 10 years ago 😅.
MLB adding in the challenge system is amazing. Refs getting humbled, also the constant complainers getting told to challenge or shut up.
God damn do I hate the NBA refs. Completely ruins a beautiful game.
There is an upside to players seeing their coach fight for them.
It’s why there is that old trick of a coach getting thrown out “on purpose” by going at the refs in an attempt to fire up the coach’s players.
there is also the teams’ energy getting wasted screaming and bitching to the refs so the coach does it to help them focus on the actual bball game
Don’t give away your secrets to the Lakers
I always thought it was to bring attention to a play or flagrant tendency. This way it get lots of replays on the scoreboard, TV, the next day news and the ref gets scrutiny into doing it again.
I was watching the Celtics-Lakers 30 for 30 recently and Bill Russell recounted a time when Red Auerbach went off on a ref for a bad goaltending call on Russell, and Bill said it was the first time a coach had ever stood up for him
I thought that only happened in baseball where the head coach doesn’t actually do anything. When has it happened in basketball?
It’s a known thing. If you have trust in your guys and your assistants then it’s not the end of the world. Finch did it once this year, can’t remember against who though.
Also that time in Hoosiers, although that was more for forcing his assistant to step up than for the players sake, but it got them fired up too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s11Ff8MktME
Finch did it once this year, can’t remember against who though.
you remember exactly against who it was, FTA
I saw a post a couple weeks later of how his ft rate reduced a lot since Finch got ejected (no idea if it actually influenced it or if it was a coincidence)
Spurs and pop would do this quite a bit over the years too.
God I miss the annual Pop ejection game
There’s an old saying, the squeaky wheel gets the grease
There’s another old saying, the nail that sticks up is the nail that gets hammered down
There’s another old saying, bitches be trippin’
“You can’t milk a stone, but you can get blood from it if you hit yourself hard enough in the forehead”
~Me, cir. 2:26 EST April 15th, 2026
Is Joe Mazzulla doing this is the reason they get zero free throws. Something is wrong with the way the game is officiated
Something was wrong long before he had a job in the league. Unfortunately it’s gotten even worse.
It worked for JB
Somebody is always going to complain. The way you get your players to not complain on the floor is by showing them that you’re willing to do it for them as the coach.
Unless you get them to bet on your team, or at least on the over.
So nothing changes for JB?
jb’s whiny ass losing his 7.5 FTs per game (9th in the league, behind several people who didnt come close to 65 games) would have him retire and become a streamer full time
Really hope you guys win tonight; Celtics in 5 next round would be great…
I think we could sweep Orlando, but I’m scared of injuries
Referee union gonna blacklist them loool
Refs are basically cops with a whistle instead of a gun.
After Kelly Oubre’s infamous “you a bitch” tirade, it legitimately felt like a full calendar year before he started getting somewhat normal calls again. Teams started catching on and realized they could obliterate him in the paint with impunity lmao
referee union will start pulling in scott foster for all celtics playoff games now
Jokes on you, Scott is the Celtics lord and savior. The anti CP3 effect. I don’t know their playoff record with him exactly, but it’s very good.
Tony Brothers, on the other hand, is the god damn devil.
Foster is the fixer - NBA likes big money matchups so it makes sense that he’s favorable to Boston.
Tony Brothers is just chaos incarnate, which tends to be unfavorable to disciplined teams like Boston.
Source: “I made it up”
As a Celtics fan I’ve never heard anything of the sort, and looking at the data it shows a slight in the opposite direction, if anything.
Celtics - Finals since 1997 (2008, 2010, 2022, 2024): With Foster as ref: 3-3 (0.500)
Without Foster: 10-8 (0.556)
Celtics - All Playoffs since 1997:
With Foster as ref: 23-23 (0.500)
Without Foster: 128-114 (0.529)
Celtics - Regular season since 1997:
With Foster as ref: 78-63 (0.553)
Without Foster: 1251-999 (0.556)
I like your style. The way refuting arguments on reddit works IME the other person basically never acknowledges your data/counterpoint other than to use a generic “cry harder/cope/keep glazing, (blank) is still (blank) 🤣🤣” but I love how you provided the actual facts to refute a memory/emotion based claim.
Bravo.
Celtics do better with tightly called games with a lot of free throws. They can adjust on defense and really get helped if the other teams cant be handsy when the Celtics are on offense. Foster calls more fouls than Brother so it benefits the Celtics.
As long as they keep him away from the wolves (he fucking hates Ant)
He also absolutely hates Rudy. I’m not sure which one he hates more.
I’m so mad that I love Joe so much
Yeah. Annoying
referees have ruined sports
Not really, just the NBA. Sure, the NFL has issues and the referees have too much ability to sway the outcome of games.
But the officiating in the NBA has made the on-court product dog shit.
Not sure if you’ve been following the ABS system in the MLB but umps are getting pretty exposed these days too.
I don’t think missing calls by a fraction of an inch is really “getting pretty exposed”
The umps, on average, are over 90% accurate overall. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE ABS and am glad that bad calls can be taken out of the game, but let’s not pretend that MLB umpires are anywhere in the same universe of suckage that NBA refs are.
They’re closer to 75% accurate on marginal balls and strikes, 90% is for all pitches including strikes down the middle and balls on wild pitches.
Still impressive for a human, but I think it’s important context.
90%+ for all pitches thrown overall, you’re making a mountain out of a mole hill. The ABS (especially the challenge system) has been FANTASTIC and baseball is my favorite sport, but it’s more of a tweak to improve something than a fix for something broken.
Officiating in the NBA is broken. Players, coaches, fans, the refs, the league, EVERYONE knows that different caliber players get different whistles and that’s somehow just accepted.
I don’t think it’s a mountain out of a mole hill to add a layer of meaningful detail to the umpire stat. I’m not saying 75% is inherently good or bad, but that is roughly the rate (so far) on calls near the edge of the strike zone, which I think is the more important rate to track when looking at umpire accuracy.
If you want to go a step further and compare MLB umps to NBA refs you can, but you probably want to use like-for-like comparisons on judgement calls.
Right. You can hate on the NFL officials for their refusal to become full-time employees and sabotage any sense of transparency and development, but the NFL has consistently revised or updated the language of their rules in order to alleviate subjective calls because something always comes up every year (leg kick and holding are the only ones that have an interpretation separate of the rule primarily due to it becoming impossible for OLs to develop anywhere close to the DL and particularly EDGE).
Outside of the gather step, the NBA just reinterprets the core fundamental rule of basketball over time, primarily what is legal footwork and dribbling without changing language. It essentially encourages a constant pushing of boundaries of what the NBA does or doesn’t allow but the frequency at which it changes is based on the popularity of a player to make it legal.
I dunno, man. I’m still not entirely sure what ‘A football move’ is when determining whether something is a catch or not.
That’s Cris Collinsworth confusing the hell out of viewers. The only thing I wish they changed about all the catch stuff is not having different rulesets depending on if the ball is caught in the end zone or outside of it.
Not really, just the NBA. Sure, the NFL has issues
Sure.. 2018 the refs directly put the Rams in the superbowl on a no-call but they’re Fiiine.
And then the NFL implemented a challenge rule for PI, but the same ref who makes the call makes the challenge and the overturn rate was like 2% the following season.
And even that pathetic excuse for a rule change was done away with after a single season.
You going back 8 years for a single example kind of proves my point.
I didn’t go back and search the annals of the NFL for bad calls. That’s just a very personal and important example of an NFL referee ruining a sport.
Eh - we’ve been arguing about what a catch is in the NFL for the last 20 years, and refs still can’t seem to figure it out consistently.
And let’s not start on some of these baseball umpires…
Reffing sports is just a really hard job, especially at higher levels of the game.
The catch thing comes up a few times a season, typically in non-crucial moments. The NBA refs fully and intentionally make calls based on the players involved, rather than the rules.
Why can refs for international basketball games call things cleanly and evenly but the NBA refs can’t?
how?
Well I stopped watching football because of all the flags and that the game was more litigated than played - they can never catch them all and there were too many critical plays where sometimes questionable flags sway the outcome. So it felt more like ref ball to me. This was a few years ago. It may have gotten better.
I also agree that teams should follow the rules and not cheat so if there was a foul no matter how big the play it should get called all the time consistently, but the official can only call a subset of what’s going on it’s too subjective for having so much influence and now seems outdated. In the age of ai we could automate all this if you really want humans in the loop they could just review things that need it.
I think consistency is the main thing that is lacking - in the NBA in particular there is very little.
NFL’s issue is more than the refs, its that the League chooses new areas of emphasis every year. NFL refs are inconsistent as a matter of constantly changing policy rather than their own incompetence.
Normalize talking shit to refs
I honestly do not see the reason for unfair and biased calls between stars and rookies/no name players
Because the refs are thin-skinned fucking pricks and it strokes their ego to assert control over the game and star players.
Less important players play a lesser role so they won’t have much impact on the game.
NBA is getting ruined by the reffing.
What do you mean by exert control over star players? Aren’t they the ones getting the calls? How does not calling FTS for a rookie control the stars?
If anyone has a less emotional answer I’m curious
The really simple answer is that the refs are human. The stars get paid more attention to in the pre-game meetings, they have more people advocating for them during the game, and after the game if there was a significant miss it’s going to receive attention and be a headache.
If you are unknown, they still need to call the fouls accurately if they can, but they don’t get any of that. If a star just had a no-call, if a no-name guy on the other team comes down and gets hit trying to get a fast break layup, they very well might no-call him too to try and even the game to placate the star.
It’s basically the same thing as if you are the boss at your job evaluating two employees but one has been your friend for 5+ years, asks about your family, and explains all the intention behind his mistakes in a way you usually understand. The other employee you have zero relationship with and know little about.
Almost everybody is going to be more charitable to the first employee than the second even though they are judged on the same criteria officially.
I really wonder about it. And I don’t get how Steph gets such shit calls.
Time to bring ABS to the NBA
Technical foul for failed attempt at sarcasm
I dont think it was sarcasm
Yeah he meant it. It was a comical way to point out how they only blow whistles for players who get meaningful playing time. He’s right too.
Ethical hoops Joe
Joe “The Connector” Mazulla
Mr Basketball Connector
Mr Building Community
Damnit. Boston is cooked.
Can’t wait for the Sixers to get completely outcoached by him next week.
We’ll outcoach ourselves, thank you very much.
We love our madman 🍀
Imagine a world where Hurley took the Lakers job and we got Hurley vs Mazzulla LAL/BOS games.
s2aa I sw2 it is s Sw a aw
Me too
Posted from my pocket, I’m so glad we’re on the same page shirt bro
so true
This is both funny, but I also think incredibly interesting as to the mind games at play here. Insinuating that a ref wants to be sycophantic w star players but not interact with bench players and not give them calls is much more psychologically damning than just “star treatment.” It says: “I see what you’re doing, and it’s cowardly. You feel small and you’re sucking up to people you think are more important than you and trying to disregard people that you think are smaller than you to feel bigger.” And the ref getting mad at him/ giving him a tech just proves that it bothers him.
I think coaches best skill/biggest influence on the game might just be walking the line of straight up psychological bullying.
Joe being Joe is one the best thing in the NBA right now, LOL
Dude definitely grew on me, at first I was a hater. He’s weird but he don’t give a shit
Correction: he doesn’t give a shit about us. He cares A LOT about the players, 1 thru 15, no matter who it is. And you can clearly see that it works.
Hes a looney tune, but hes a great coach and everyone on the team would run through a brick wall for him
Coty lock
Ngl it does feel like this. Like if you’re familiar with a star or know a player favorability is easier.
As a Knicks fan, I’m so jealous of Boston for Mazulla. While he got out-coached by a Thibs last year, he’s about the best coach in the NBA.
I like brown but man it would’ve been amazing to have Joe as our coach
Naaaaaah I’m not even a big ego kinda guy, but they can walk their happy asses over to me while they warm up if they want to be friendly 😂.
I hate the Celtics so much, but I can’t deny Mazzulla. Fuckin legend, amazing coach
Joe has no fucks. As a Laker fan, I appreciate him!
I love this sociopath of a coach. I wish he coached my team.
BOS usually gets a very good whistle, Id be careful Joe
The worship of this clown coach on this sub is something else
If a clown coach can do what he does I’ll buy tickets to that circus
tbh joe & your head coach are entertaining asf with refs, your coach is a smart ass to the refs, especially when it’s time to challenge a call. i fuck with that type of shit tho, i don’t like boring coaches.
Jealous?