Joe Mazzulla Showing Jayson Tatum Clips Of The Dark Knight As Motivation Is Why He's The Absolute Best

Boston Globe. Getty Images.

One of the best parts of this entire Celtics season is the validation it gave Joe Mazzulla. A guy that only got this job because the coach before him was a creepy weirdo at work, not only took advantage of his opportunity but arguably changed the direction of the franchise forever. Doubted at every single step of this journey, we should not overlook just how incredible Joe Mazzulla has been since taking over this roster

Yes, his roster has talent but so what? Plenty of talented rosters exist throughout NBA history that did not accomplish what Joe Mazzulla and the 2024 Celts were able to achieve. If there was ever a "put respect on this man's name" moment, it is right now.

Joe Mazzulla is a basketball psycho in all the right ways. What many clowned for the last two years as cringy has actually been proven to be just what this team needed. The buy-in Joe was able to have from every single player on the roster is one of the largest reasons this team won the title, and since Day 1 he has had this team prepared for everything and everything. You don't go 80-21 and 16-3 (7-1 on the road) without being extremely focused and prepared, and to me that falls on the coaching staff.

We all know Joe loves The Town, highlighted by one of the greatest media sessions we may have ever seen from a head coach before

So it was only fitting that while talking Pardon My Take fellas today Joe just so happened to drop this nugget

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God dammit do I love this psycho. Of course this happened! In fact, it'd be more surprising if something like this didn't happen involving Joe and Tatum. This is the exact out of the box thinking that ultimately helped Tatum and the Celtics finally get over the hump. Do we think it worked? I dunno, you tell me

I'm going to go ahead and say that yes, yes it did!

It's no secret that as the best player/franchise player, Jayson Tatum faces an insane amount of scrutiny and pressure. In my opinion, no player in the entire playoff field had more pressure on them to seal the deal than Jayson Tatum. After his failures in 2022, the All NBA 1st Teams, the playoffs last year and then the historic regular season this year, this was a legacy-defining playoff run for Tatum and I'm not sure how that could be debatable. He was getting stamped one way or another, all we needed to find out was which stamp it would be.

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Thanks to Joe's out of the box thinking, that stamp ended up being a Celtics legend forever and one of the most impressive basketball resumes we've ever seen by a player under 27 years old

Aside from all the basketball stuff, if we've learned anything from Joe Mazzulla this year it's that he has fantastic taste in movies. Find someone who doesn't love The Dark Knight? You can't. That's a movie I am 100% stopping and watching if I come across it while surfing channels, regardless of what point the movie is on. The re-watchability of really any Batman movie is what makes them so awesome in my opinion, and now that I know it helped the Celtics best player deal with the pressure of winning in a way that brought the 18th banner? I'm afraid I now have to consider it one of the greatest movies ever made.

You can catch the full Mazzulla interview below, and make sure you subscribe to PMT so you never miss a thing