Joe Mazzulla and Will Hardy Discuss Becoming Head Coaches, What the Former Learned from the Latter and Hardy's Evaluation of the Celtics

Joe Mazzulla and Will Hardy went from being Celtics assistants last season to the NBA's youngest active head coaches.

After 11 years with the Spurs, Will Hardy received an offer from newly hired Celtics head coach Ime Udoka offering him the lead assistant job on his coaching staff.

The two were together for seven years in San Antonio, including three on Gregg Popovich's staff. And after discussing the opportunity with his wife and coach Popovich, Hardy left the only NBA organization he had known to join Udoka in Boston.

"This was an opportunity to take a step up," Hardy said before Friday's matchup, in which the Celtics evened the season series with a 122-114 win. "It was an opportunity to work with a very good friend of mine and help build a program."

Pregame, Joe Mazzulla, who at 34 is the youngest active head coach in the NBA, detailed what he learned from Hardy, who at 35 is the league's second-youngest bench boss, in their time together.

"He’s a really smart basketball mind, and it's good for me to be able to watch how he navigated being an associate head coach, how he served Ime (Udoka), how he brought the staff together, how he organized everything, how he handles the players," conveyed Mazzulla. "I learned a lot from him, just how he put his mark on our organization, especially in such a short period of time."

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The Jazz had interest in bringing Mazzulla aboard Hardy's coaching staff, but Boston blocked that from happening. Celtics' owner Wyc Grousbeck told their CEO of basketball operations, Danny Ainge, he could poach one of them, not both.

While discussing his friendship with Mazzulla during his pregame media availability on Friday, Hardy expressed, "this business is hard, and these jobs are hard to get, and we’re all very lucky to have them. So to be able to have opportunities to coach against friends or mentors or anything like that is always super cool. I try not to take those moments for granted."

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Post-game, after registering a game-high 39 points and grabbing 11 rebounds, Jayson Tatum said of Utah's head coach, "I could tell that Will wasn't gonna be here long. That he was gonna get an opportunity very, very soon. He was motivated. He was hungry, and (he) knows what he's doing. He's got those guys playing extremely well, so I couldn't be happier for him. It's somebody that I still have a relationship with to this day. We talk from time to time. I've got a lot of respect for him."

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As for Hardy's evaluation of the Celtics:

"This team, when I watch them play, they have everything they need to make a deep run," adding, "Joe’s a great coach. Those guys all believe in him, and they all believe in each other. I know they’re a tight-knit group. They’ve had injuries and stuff this year as well, which any team goes through over the course of a season. But I think with some good health late, they’re as dangerous as anybody."

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