Celtics Fans Will Love Joe Mazzulla’s Mindset About Going After Repeat

BOSTON — There was no coach speak on the matter, or dancing around the topic from Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla.

Mazzulla made it clear that Boston’s objective this season is to repeat as NBA champions, a feat that hasn’t been accomplished since the Golden State Warriors did so in 2017 and 2018.

“I think you got to be honest, right? At the end of the day whether we won or lost, if we’re standing up here at this point, the goal’s to win,” Mazzulla said at Celtics media day on Tuesday. “Whether we would have lost last year our goal would be to win a championship this year. So, just clearly stating we want to win a championship every single year. That’s the goal, that’s the standard, that’s the expectation. So, what happened in the past really doesn’t change — when we step foot in the building on this day it’s to win a championship. That’s always going to be the goal.”

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The Celtics are better positioned than most teams to get back to the mountaintop. They didn’t have a significant departure from their title team as they not only kept their core intact for the foreseeable future, but also handed a contract extension to a role player like Sam Hauser and resigned ancillary pieces in Luke Kornet and Xavier Tillman.

But while the Celtics have arguably the most talented starting five in the league along with terrific depth, they understand they won’t just be handed the Larry O’Brien Trophy.

Repeating as champions also means repeating the painstaking steps required to obtain the coveted hardware and not skipping over one along the way.

“We just have to work toward that and have an understanding there are a lot of things that go into it and there are a lot of things that we can’t control about it,” Mazzulla said. “But there’s never going to be a media day, Sept. 25, Oct. 1 where it’s not like, ‘Hey, we’re trying to win a championship.’ That’s the environment that we create and that’s the fun. That’s the goal.”