Following Boston’s first win against the Dallas Mavericks in the NBA finals, Mazzulla was asked by a reporter in a press conference about this matchup being the first time since 1975 that two black head coaches have faced off in the championship.
“Given the plight, sometimes, of black coaches in the NBA, do you think this is a significant moment? Do you take pride in this? How do you view this or do you not see it at all?” the reporter asked.
“I wonder how many of those have been Christian coaches?” Mazzulla answered, followed by a long moment of silence. That exchange, too, received heavy media attention.
In the recent NBC docuseries, Mazzulla — who often dons a small gold cross pinned on his shirt while he coaches — said that he likes to get to the basketball facility around noon and do a “prayer walk,” seeming to reference his arrival time and ritual before games.
“I like to do a prayer walk around the court at the Garden. I like to be in the Garden when there’s not a lot of people there, just because it’s the Garden. So I get there at like 11-12, do a 20-minute walk around the court and just kind of take in how cold it is. I love that, the smell of it, just the banners obviously, taking all that in,” he said.
Shown during his “prayer walk,” Mazzulla can be seen holding a green and gold wooden rosary.
That rosary was a gift given to him made from the original floor of the now-vanished Boston Garden, Mazzulla said.
“And so it just ties two of the three most important things in my life, [which] is the job that I have for the Celtics, my faith, and the tradition of the Celtics, it’s just a really cool gift,” he said.
“I also love collecting rosary beads just because it tells a story of kind of where you were at,” he said.
Home chapel
In the docuseries, Mazzulla introduces viewers to his private home chapel in which he said he tries to begin and end his days in.
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“So when Camai [his wife] came to look at the place, she walked in this room first and she was like, ‘This is the room for the chapel.’ So I always made a promise that we were going to have that. So it’s important,” he said.
“We try to start our day and end our day in here,” he added.
The chapel has religious candles, statues of the Blessed Virgin Mary, other icons, an altar, kneelers, a holy water font, rosaries, a bookshelf, and a crucifix.
Mazzulla also pointed to a photo of him and his childhood priest Father Marcel Taillon at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem.
“He’s the guy that blessed the crowd when we were down nine to Minnesota. He’s been my priest since I’ve been in eighth grade, so we’ve known each other now for almost 20 years,” Mazzulla said. Taillon was the former chaplain at Bishop Hendricken High School when Mazzulla attended from 2002 to 2006.
The crowd blessing occurred on Jan. 10 when the Celtics were facing off with the Minnesota Timberwolves in the fourth quarter. The Celtics were down by nine points with just over four minutes left when Taillon, wearing his clerics, was shown on the jumbotron. Taillon began to bless the crowd and the assembly began to cheer.
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