Celtics guard Jrue Holiday’s hilarious revelation on ‘crazy’ Joe Mazzulla

Last week, the Boston Celtics advanced to the Eastern Conference Finals with a home win vs the Cleveland Cavaliers in Game 5 of their Eastern Conference semifinals series. While it should be noted that the Cavaliers were playing without several key pieces including Donovan Mitchell and Jarrett Allen, the Celtics were still likely going to be the clear favorites in that series either way, and were also playing with Kristaps Porzingis out of the lineup due to injury.

Celtics point guard Jrue Holiday had a bit of an up and down start to his Boston playoff tenure in the first round vs the Miami Heat but bounced back with a solid overall performance in round two vs the Cavaliers, and now, Holiday is getting one hundred percent real on Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla and how his style has influenced the Celtics’ approach.

“He’s crazy,” said Holiday, per Noa Dalzell of CelticsBlog on X, the social media platform formerly referred to as Twitter. “If anybody knows Joe, y’all know he’s crazy. That’s pretty much it… But I don’t know, maybe controlled madness. It’s definitely his way of preparing us and I feel like preparing himself and I think it’s been working.”

Holiday also elaborated on why he appreciates this style of coaching.

“It’s fun. It’s different,” said Holiday. “I feel like some coaches sometimes can be methodical and boring, but Joe definitely brings a spark and some weird injury that I think kind of keeps us engaged and gets us going.”

A cakewalk so far

The Celtics have not exactly been challenged very much so far in this postseason, first easily dispatching the Miami Heat (without Jimmy Butler and Terry Rozier) in the first round before taking out the Cavaliers, also without two starters for a large portion of the series, in round two.

Whether or not this lack of adversity so far is a good thing for the Celtics is certainly a fair thing to wonder. While this group as a whole obviously has been battle-tested in the postseason, having taken on Goliaths like Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant, and even for some of them, LeBron James during this era, there is something to be said about having to immediately “flip a switch” once adversity inevitably hits.

It’s unlikely that the Celtics will get a taste of that even in the Eastern Conference Finals, as the team will either face a New York Knicks squad without potentially its entire frontcourt rotation, or a relatively untalented Indiana Pacers team that will have backdoored their way into that series solely due to the injuries of their first two playoff opponents.

In either case, it’s highly unlikely that the Celtics will find themselves in a true “backs against the wall” scenario until the NBA Finals, when they will face either the Minnesota Timberwolves, Denver Nuggets, or the Dallas Mavericks after the Oklahoma City were eliminated in Dallas on Saturday evening.

Game 1 of the conference finals will get underway at TD Garden on Tuesday evening at 8:00 PM ET.