Joe Mazzulla explained reasoning for Coach of the Year comments

Joe Mazzola won by nearly three-quarters (72.6 percent) Of the regular season games he coached with Celtics.

He’s benefited from working with an extremely talented roster and staff throughout his time here in Boston, and he’s not shy about directing the praise he gets for the team’s success toward them.

When asked about his nomination for the NBA Coach of the Year award a few weeks ago, Mazzola called the award stupid and said he hoped no one would ask him about it again.

On Saturday, he was asked about it again. But this time, he was asked when he decided to start answering such questions the way he did.

“I think being a Division I basketball player, you grow up with this sense of entitlement as if the whole world revolves around you,” Mazzola said. “I had to – by nature – if I wanted to be a better husband, a better father, a better coach, I had to get rid of that kind of entitlement.”

“I would say that going through life as a student-athlete, you kind of think it’s all about you, and it’s not,” Mazzola said. “I had to surrender to that. There’s something so much bigger than me in sports, in the world, in life, so this is important.”

He made the comments about the award as the Celtics were putting the finishing touches on an unexpectedly competitive season.

At the beginning of the year, Set your bet on ESPN Over/Under For the Celtics’ win total at 40.5. They won 56 games, locked up the No. 2 seed for the second straight season and finished one win behind the 57 games the Celtics won in Mazzola’s first season. They did so without Jayson Tatum for most of the year while he recovered from a ruptured Achilles tendon.

They also did it with a young team. Derrick White is the only player among the Celtics’ top 8 players who is over 30 years old. Tatum, Jaylen Brown, Payton Pritchard and Sam Hauser are all 28 or 29 years old.

They’ve gotten a boost from developing young players. Neemias Queta became a legitimate starting center. They got contributions from Baylor Sherman, Hugo Gonzalez and Jordan Walsh.

These developments put Mazzola in serious consideration for the Coach of the Year award. Detroit’s J.B. Bickerstaff is also a contender, having taken Detroit from the worst record in the league two years ago to the top seed in the Eastern Conference.

According to BetMGMMazzola finished the regular season as the favorite to win. Bickerstaff had a long run as the favourite.

Sixteen years ago, Mazzola helped West Virginia reach the Final Four in the NCAA Tournament as a player. He is now coaching the Celtics to the playoffs for the fourth year in a row.

He said there’s more to the story about the process that caused his mindset to shift when it comes to awards and credit. But he explained his reasons for working this way.

“This is a deeper conversation,” Mazzola said when asked about the process. “At the end of the day, we’re all proudly struggling in some capacity and learning how to deal with that…We’re all just looking to be better.”

Khari A. Thompson

Sports reporter

Khary Thompson covers professional sports for Boston.com. Before joining the team in 2022, Khary covered college football for The Clarion Ledger in Jackson, Miss.