Another Night, Another Unsung Hero for the Celtics, but How Does it Keep Happening?

The Celtics have been leaning on their “Different Here” motto for a few years now, and it’s pretty good at capturing the team’s ethos. I’m not sure it’s perfect, though. I think a more accurate one would be “how the [expletive] are they doing this?” But it’s hard to make that work on a T-shirt.

It might be the phrase most often uttered about his team, though.

A 49-24 record with nine games to play in a season that saw them lose Jrue Holiday, Kristaps Porzingis, Al Horford, Luke Kornet, and, for all but the last 10 games, Jayson Tatum?

Jaylen Brown raising his game to where some voters are announcing he’ll be first on their MVP ballot?

Castoffs being signed for minimums, getting starts, and outright winning multiple games for them?

Tatum not only coming back from Achilles surgery after 10 months, but averaging nearly 20 and 10, and playing 36 minutes in just his 10th game back?

Guys sitting at the end of the bench, getting a bunch of DNP’s, and then coming in an making an instant impact in their first game back?

How. The. [EXPLETIVE]. Are. They. Doing. This?

Building A Culture

“A lot of credit goes to our coaching staff and our player development staff of each and every day, getting the work in, preparing, getting game reps, and then locking in on film, and knowing that Joe's not afraid to just sub a guy in for 2, 3, 4, minutes or 30 minutes some nights,” Sam Hauser recently said. “A lot of us in this room have been in that spot at some point in our career, so I think it's easy when you have people ahead of you that have done it. It's easy to fall in line. But a lot of credit goes to our coaches and coaching staff and the culture that we've built.”

There it is. There's the word.

“Hard work, being about your work every day, coming in and trying to get better at the things that we need to improve at,” Payton Pritchard said after beating the Hawks. “That's just a testament to the culture we built here.”

Pritchard was talking about the rebounding, which we can also add to that list we’re compiling. The Celtics are now seventh in defensive rebounds per game and sixth in defensive rebounding percentage this season, mostly because they’ve been the best defensive rebounding team in the league since the All-Star break. That's something even Joe Mazzulla was willing to accept as a weakness that needed a workaround rather than to be fixed.

Nah. They just went full Happy Gilmore and said they’ll just make the putt and win the tournament. Who needs a workaround if you’re the Celtics? Not with the culture they’ve built.

The Celtics don’t need to write a manifesto to their culture on the floor because they’ve had it hanging above them this whole time. It’s something Mazzulla is keenly aware of, having grown up as a Celtics fan in Rhode Island.

“This job wouldn't be what it was if the people before us didn't do what they did,” Mazzulla said earlier this week. “It's our responsibility to move it forward the way that they did. And so really just a ton of gratitude … for the people that have come before us to make this job and to make this city what it is.”

But the culture Mazzulla and Brad Stevens have built here isn’t just about living up to the legacy of the banners. Those banners have hung there since the building opened (okay, 16 of them have been. They’ve added two more since). That doesn’t mean this culture has existed since then.

Stevens has filled the Celtics locker room with the types of players willing and ready to buy into a team mindset. Mazzulla has cultivated that by distilling his team’s world down to what’s important, and what’s not. He is constantly trying to weed out the intrusive concepts of false importance that often bring NBA players down, instead showing them that even things perceived as negatives aren’t what they seem.

Are media narratives unfair? Good. That means you’re good enough for the media to construct these narratives around. This is what you wanted.

Are you not getting enough minutes? Good. That means you’re on a great team, so stay ready because we’ll need you to be great too when your number is called.

Sitting to Shining

Whatever it is, Mazzulla wants his team to embrace it instead of shutting it out. Shutting it out doesn’t make it go away, it just means that thing is on the other side of the door. Mazzulla wants his guys to leave the door open and not care that that thing can come in. Whatever it is.

So when Jordan Walsh gets the call to play meaningful minutes after sitting for six straight games, and eight of his last 10, he can step onto the floor with all the confidence in the world, because he’s not fighting for anything or trying to prove anything. All he’s doing is a job that he knows his coach expects.

“The first thing is we have - everybody on the bench has impacted games, long stretches, short stretches. That's the most important thing,” Mazzulla said. “Two, the season just has a flow to it, and you just play different lineups, different things there.

“But even when he wasn't playing, the most important thing is he knows that when you're not playing, there's still a level of trust there. As long as you keep that level of trust, it doesn't matter what the situation of the game is. If you can help us win, you're going to play. And even when he wasn't playing, I still had a level of trust that when he's out there, he's going to put us in position to win.”

That is how the [expletive] they're doing this. There is a guiding principle for the Celtics, and it has nothing to do with any individual. The goal is to win basketball games and win a championship. There are a few dozen players, coaches, and staff members that spend almost every waking moment together for the better part of 10 months, and they all need to be guided by that single principle.

The culture Mazzulla has built makes it happen. It’s why Walsh can feel good about what he’s done this season, even if he sits out a bunch. It’s also why Baylor Scheierman and Luka Garza have been able to do the same thing at different points this season.

It’s easy to still be surprised by these kinds of things, but we shouldn’t be anymore. This is who the Celtics are. It’s even about overachieving, because their expectations are not our expectations.

This is everything they thought they could be from day one. Mazzulla and the culture he’s built wouldn’t have it any other way.