Joe Mazzulla makes history, leads Boston Celtics to NBA title

Former Mountaineer makes WVU and NBA historical past as he coaches the Boston Celtics to the league’s mannequin franchise’s newest championship

Joe Mazzulla has made historical past ever since he took over the Boston Celtics’ head teaching position in 2022, and he secured probably the most historic win of his younger teaching profession Monday night time in Recreation 5 of the NBA Finals.

The previous Mountaineer guided the top-seeded Celtics to the franchise’s newest NBA championship, downing the Dallas Mavericks 106-88. It’s Boston’s NBA-best 18th league title.

Mazzulla is now the youngest head coach to win an NBA title because the NBA-ABA merger in 1976 and the primary former WVU participant or coach to win knowledgeable championship as a head coach since Joe Stydahar led the Los Angeles Rams to the 1951 NFL title.

“You get only a few probabilities in life to be nice, and also you get only a few modifications in life to hold on the possession and the duties of what these banners are and all the good individuals and nice gamers that got here right here,” Mazzulla informed ESPN’s Lisa Salters at midcourt on the trophy presentation stage. “When you might have few probabilities in life, you simply received to take the bull by the horns and you bought to only personal it.”

Boston’s win over Dallas concludes a dominant season wherein the Celtics achieved the most effective regular-season document (64-18) within the NBA by seven video games earlier than going 16-3 within the postseason.

“The brilliance of Joe Mazzulla is that he wouldn’t let expectations get in the best way,” Celtics proprietor Wyc Grousbeck stated on the stage instantly following his group profitable the title.

The second-year head coach recorded his a centesimal regular-season win in his 137th recreation this February, marking the fourth-fastest path to 100 wins in NBA historical past. Steve Kerr, Tom Thibodeau and Avery Johnson are the one coaches to achieve the mark in fewer video games. Mazzulla additionally holds the best profitable proportion (72.9%) in NBA historical past, together with playoff video games, with a 148-55 document total document.

In school, he helped the Mountaineers attain the Last 4 in 2010 as a junior guard. He returned to the state of West Virginia later in his profession, serving a stint as the pinnacle males’s basketball coach at Fairmont State.