Joe Mazzulla does not take summers off. The Celtics head coach, fresh off winning NBA Coach of the Year, was spotted last week at Xtreme Couture in Las Vegas. MMA insider Ariel Helwani posted footage of Mazzulla running pad drills and rolling through grappling sessions with coach Eric Nicksick. He looked comfortable. That makes sense. Mazzulla has trained in Brazilian jiu-jitsu and MMA for almost five years now.
He doesn’t just train when he’s home in Boston. Mazzulla hits local gyms during Celtics road trips. The guy finds a mat wherever the schedule takes him. It’s not really about staying in shape, either. At least not entirely. Mazzulla has said before that combat sports shaped how he thinks about coaching. The discipline. The composure under pressure. The mental stamina required to keep making decisions when everything is going wrong. He sees the overlap between a fighter in the cage and an NBA team in a fourth-quarter playoff run.
Why a basketball coach trains like a fighter
Nicksick and Mazzulla stay in touch year-round. They talk about preparation, about decision-making when the stakes are highest, about what it actually takes to build championship habits. The partnership goes beyond just workouts. Mazzulla isn’t just keeping busy. He’s living the same culture he asks his players to buy into. If he expects them to push past limits, he figures he should do the same.
His coaching career moved fast. Faster than almost anyone’s. Mazzulla joined Boston as an assistant in 2019, took over as interim head coach in 2022, and won an NBA title in 2024. He became the youngest coach to win a championship since 1970. Then this season, with Jayson Tatum missing significant time due to an Achilles injury, Mazzulla still got Boston to 274 wins against 111 losses in his career (playoffs included). That’s the highest winning percentage among coaches with at least 200 games on an NBA sideline. Not bad for a guy who spends his summers getting thrown around by professional fighters.
The Celtics are running it back next season. Tatum is expected to be healthy. The roster is still deep. And their coach will show up in the fall having spent his offseason getting punched in the face. Figuratively. Mostly.
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