Heading into the season, some NBA pundits and fans saw this as a “gap year” for the Boston Celtics. Star guard Jayson Tatum was coming off a torn Achilles suffered in last year’s playoffs, while key contributors Kristaps Porziņģis and Jrue Holiday were dealt in the offseason. Longtime center Al Horford also departed, signing with the Golden State Warriors in free agency.
But as the NBA enters the postseason, there the Celtics are, back in familiar territory as the No. 2 seed in the Eastern Conference after posting a 55-26 regular-season record. It’s the fifth straight season in which Boston has finished in the top two in the East. After missing most of the season recovering, Tatum is back playing, and head coach Joe Mazzulla is looking to lead his team to a second NBA championship under his watch.
>> Subscribe to Sports Spectrum Magazine for more stories where sports and faith connect <<
The way the Celtics closed out the regular season was perhaps a microcosm of the 2025-26 season. Tatum and fellow star guards Jaylen Brown and Derrick White, along with a host of key reserves, were unavailable for Game No. 82, yet the Celtics beat the Orlando Magic — which was battling for playoff positioning — with just eight available players.
“We said it all year, one through [18], whoever steps on the floor, there’s an expectation to put us in position with an opportunity to win,” Mazzulla said Sunday after the game. “Stick to the process of winning. Today is no different than the other 81 games from the standpoint of we had eight guys, and the expectation is to put us in position to win, to execute, to play hard, to play together.”
For his efforts this season, Mazzulla is on the shortlist for Coach of the Year honors. Should he win, he’ll point the spotlight off himself and instead toward God, as he often does when on the biggest stage.
When the Celtics won the title in 2024, Mazzulla donned a black shirt that read — in all white capital letters — “BUT FIRST…LET ME THANK GOD.” As the head coach for one of the most storied franchises in all of professional sports, he sees his platform as an opportunity to regularly give glory to God.
View this post on Instagram
He remained in that shirt for all of the postgame celebration photos and interviews. He was even pictured holding up the Larry O’Brien Trophy, smiling while proudly wearing the shirt. It marked the 18th world championship for the Celtics — the most of any NBA franchise — and the official photo and video documentation of it will forever include his bold and public statement of faith.
The championship celebration continued into the early hours of the morning, at which time Mazzulla walked around the confetti-filled arena with his wife, Camai, and prayed.
“On the walk we were talking a lot about how this can’t change us,” he told the audience at a Nations of Coaches event in Boston in 2024. “A lot of it was praying for the humility and perspective to not allow this to change who we are.”
The Mazzulla home proudly features a “prayer board” where he, his wife, and their children add prayers throughout the year. The board oscillates between prayers for their immediate family, friends and other loved ones. At one point, it included a prayer for Mazzulla to rise through the coaching ranks and become an NBA coach. But as he was making the grind through the Division-II ranks, coaching in the NBA felt like sort of a pipe dream.
“I almost took the ‘NBA head coach’ one down and then she kind of yelled at me and made me keep it up there,” he said at the event.
Before he was married, he started a “vision board,” where he put up pictures of goals he wanted to “speak into existence.” On it were goals like winning the NBA championship and working for the Celtics, and eventually photos of his wife and kids as well as NBA coaches Brad Stevens, Erik Spoelstra and Steve Kerr. There was also a photo of Jesus.
“The vision board kind of tells your story — like I want to work for the Celtics, I want to win a Larry O’Brien Trophy, I want to be able to learn from these three guys … I want to keep Jesus at the center of it, and I want to have a family,” he said. “So it kind of helps you tell the story about where you want to go and how you’re going to get there.”
As he’s grown older as a man and as a coach, so too has his faith and understanding of Jesus — in particular the concept of grace.
“Over the last maybe five to eight years I’ve really made a commitment to study grace and what real love is and understanding [all that],” Mazzulla said on the Sports Spectrum Podcast in October 2023. “How I’m able to accept God’s grace or how I’m able to accept His love is going to be how I’m able to give it to my kids or my wife or people. So it’s something that I’ve really been focused on the last few years: grace, love, understanding, mercy, those gifts.”
He’s also able to see how God has orchestrated his career to where he’s gone from the lower ranks of college to coaching an NBA champion.
“There’s no coincidence that I’ve had the opportunity to coach a team of the area that I’m from,” he said on the podcast. “I grew up 45 minutes from [Boston] and God has given me this. I try to be as thankful as I can every single day, knowing it might not last forever, but this is where God has us. So I can’t hide that, and I’m just forever grateful for what He’s done for me.”
Mazzulla and the Celtics will begin their 2026 playoff run Sunday against whichever team emerges as the East’s No. 7 seed from the play-in round.
>> Do you know Christ personally? Learn how you can commit your life to Him. <<
RELATED STORIES:
— SS PODCAST: Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla on grace, humility, identity
— Joe Mazzulla leads Celtics back to NBA Finals, says it’s ‘where God has us’
— Joe Mazzulla learning from Christ’s leadership: ‘God’s given us unique gifts’
— Dylan Cardwell keepss shining for Kings, says his ‘joy comes from the Lord’
— ‘By the grace of God,’ Bones Hyland playing key role for Timberwolves
