How the Celtics’ high IQ dominated the NBA Finals 

Coaching is one thing all these TV analysts always seem to ignore. The Celtics SCHOOLED the Mavericks with their scheming, and yet the "experts" STILL couldn't explain why even if you showed them this video.

Joe is almost certainly intellectually gifted, and he has used that intellect to think about the game of basketball in a way that no one really ever has before him. So grateful to have him as our coach💚

When people talk about playing Basketball the "Right Way" this is what they mean. 🍀

I think Boston as a city and the Celtics as an organization are such unsung heroes. Not only are they finding the right athletes to draft and trade for, but they are also do an incredible job cultivating loyalty and hard work ethic. Every Celtic is hard working and buys into two-way play, and they are such a strong team that they can field their bench for half the regular season, getting a ton of experience and training on them too. I truly believe that if Tatum and Brown had been drafted to other teams they would not be champions that they are today, they benefited from the Celtics organization as much as the other way around. Boston has been taking players and turning them into the best version of themselves and making everybody look good. Then trading them when they are at their highest value for other athletes that they know they can cultivate. Boston is just such a well run Sports Team from top to bottom.

Everyone talks about Jaylen browns iso defense on Luka, which obviously was fantastic and deserves all the praise, but I think we should also discuss how impactful Tatum’s defense was at taking away the impact of Daniel gafford, Derek lively, and pj Washington on offense due to limiting the roll and the lob. Truly a team wide defensive masterclass with a great coached system and a full 5 man unit executing to perfection.

Hats off to Boston, they were in a class of their own this season

3:50 really interesting statistics here, Mavericks love those corner 3s and the fact that Boston dropped their percentage down to only 6% is insane, it took Dallas completely out of their comfort zone

There is a reason Brad kept Joe around during the changeover of front offices. They were on the same page both team building and strategy. One of the most well balanced teams in league history. Which is a blueprint for successful teams in the new CBA.

I heard a lot of comments about how the Celtics play "boring" basketball. But the bottom line is, it's only boring if the only thing you can focus on while watching the game is the ball itself, all the off-ball movement, defensive switches and sets, and manipulation of their opponent is like poetry in motion for real basketball fans.

Jamal and UD face expression alone tells you the respect #Mazzulla has earned amongst the #NBA league now!

People say watching the Celtics is boring, but seeing the details of how their offense works and how in sync they all are is nothing short of sexy 🔥

Actually after watching half of this video I genuinely think that the Celtics deserved every bit of their wins. Fantastic defence and use of anaylitics. Scheming was fantastic

Mazzulla was impressive. Love this team.

I can admit I was a Boston hater the whole season, but I have to give their props they were the most dominant team all year and they played perfect basketball, so my hats off to Boston

Thank you for this one! Finally some credit to the Celtics coaching and tactics and as to why JT never went off to splash big points. It was a well-oiled machine that exploited other teams not by sheer talent but Joe Mazzulla outcoached everyone this year. A team sport master class where neither JT nor JB needed to have combined 80 point games.

You can really see the Pep Guardiola influence in Joe's detailed and systematic approach of the game. Pep changed football forever, and we might see a massive change in the basketball landscape with Joe.

Congratulations Thinking Basketball! ❤ to watch your creation here in NBA...😊

Thinking Basketball on the NBA channel? Hell yeah! Great content hope to see more featuring like this.

i love derick white

And people said this series was boring…..it was a MASTERCLASS Happy to see thinking basketball on this platform he is a true basketball analyst!!!!!

Boston’s defense was elite . Casuals won’t understand. They clearly made it very difficult for Dallas to get anything off . Kyrie and Luka looked lost out there

You can say what you want but you better say that Joe Mazulla is a HELLUVA coach. Just look at how in sync the players are. Read, react, execute & most of all, be unselfish enough to make that pass

Having @ThinkingBasketball's insights on how the Cs dominated the Finals in the freaking NBA page is basically the league admitting the Mavs had no chance in hell outside of Luka/Kyrie making impossible circus shots for 48 mins. Good to see this video here. Besides Mazzulla and the coaching staff, big chunk of the credit goes to the players themselves for buying in to the system and using all of the 82 games to master their defensive craft.

Boston=High IQ sounds about right!

Celtics won in 2008 despite Doc Rivers' coaching. Celtics won in 2024 because of Joe Mazzulla's coaching.

Another insightful content from Ben Taylor . My goat 🐐 ❤

And people say joe mazzulla was a inexperienced coach

In a trip to Manchester City's training ground some time ago, Mazzula was speaking to some of the players. He shared how he studies their (Man City) transition defense and counter attacks. Linking it to basketball. After game 5, Mazzula said Pep Guardiola helped him with transitions and movement of the players because Dallas is a great defensive team and they had to be creative. Watching the Celtics you can see the similarities especially with the spacing, the fluidity of the players and their ability to adapt to what the opponent does. Mazzula is now studying how Pep Guardiola is able to keep building dominant teams that never tire of winning. Good luck yo everyone else.

Woah I thought this was a thinking basketball upload. Turns out NBA uploaded it. Crazy.

As a Celtics fan I had a very fun conversation with a guy I worked for this year about how the Celtics seem to target smart players. It’s rare they have a guy on the team who’s selfish and plays individual basketball (even tho their 2 stars are iso scorers, it’s understood that they’re just that good). It’s rare to see Jrue, White, Al, or KP make a bad play. For the secondary supporting cast around the stars, that’s extremely rare. They all take a smaller role. And then the 3rd rank guys know their role. Hauser just shoots 3s, Pritchard is aggressive with the ball, Kornet just blocks shots and dunks, Tillman and Brissett just play D and get boards, it’s just a roster full of guys who understand their role and don’t take bad analytical shots.

Celtics played very good

Ben Taylor is the GOAT

Shout out to Thinking Basketball I have been following for two years.

Thinking Basketball on NBA, the world is healing

i just learned so much basketball from this video 😂

Terrific analysis, the best I've heard yet on the finals. Mazzulla deservedly is getting credit for Boston's tremendous multi-layered strategy at both ends. But these players deserve just as much credit for their execution and intuitive understanding of how to play together. This is the most high-end, disciplined and intentional thinking defense I've seen in 45 years of watching the NBA. They've even surpassed the Spurs in that regard.

That play with all the fingerpointing was amazing coordination. Pity it did not result in a swish!

Back to back? I like that record

Thinking basketball now officially part of the NBA.... As Rick Ross would say.."now that's big time"...Congratulations Sir, well deserved.

Had not noticed so much pre-switching watching it live. That is so smart and so well -rehearsed. Mazzula may be a real dude

Look at UDs face while listening at Mazulla lmao!

I didn't know Thinking Basketball was in the NBA App and Channel. One of the best basketball channels out there guys. :)

This video just highlights mazzullas genius

the key point was that celtics had huge resourses of defence. most of the game, they had 4-5 guys on court being ready for switching to defense different players including center, guard or forward

"the man cant move faster than the ball" thats one of Pep's main principles in his football philosophy, Mazzulla might just be the basketball Guardiola

Jamal was bamboozled but he wouldnt care, but UD was shooked and know why his heat was cooked 😂

Love my coach !! 🍀

Excellent work!!

The crazy part is that besides game 1. That was Boston worst shooting spree from three had they been average this series would been over and done with.

Love Thinking Basketball

Great breakdown

Terrific insight from start to finish.

Excellent commentary

You want to know what is hiliaorus... I did this in NBA 2K the other night. It actually fucking worked. My opponent didn't know what to do. So basically he isolated the entire game. I could tell he was not use to playing like that and just wanted to get to his pick and roll.

Loved this!

Ben Taylor is setting the standard for easy to digest basketball analysis

An incredible breakdown!👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿☘️☘️☘️🏆

Amazing analysis

Excellent video.

gafford & lively were a complete mess if they were outside the paint, derrick & pj never got into rythm because boston wasnt double teaming luka or irving. Their bench players were completely shut down and jason kidd was out coached, it was just a disastrous finals for dallas and a clinic from boston start to finish.

Wow a collab with Thinking Basketball i love it

A collab with @ThinkingBasketball ? Awesome. Great RU-vid channel for NBA content.

After last year’s Miami series, I thought Joe Mazzulla was totally overmatched. I’m glad to admit I was apparently wrong. Great video!

Derrick White & Jrue Holiday INSANE BACK-COURT DEFENSE 💪🔥💪

Awesome vid

GREAT ANALYSIS

Joe is so good

Haslem's face in that very first minute is a graphical representation of his basketball takes

As a Celtics fan, I doubted Joe Mazulla, now he has my respcet . ☘️

wow! NBA posted this video.. congrats to the content creator!

Incredible video

NBA channel had to bring in someone to explain what they couldn't lol

Great video. Just to let you know John Karalis has named dropped you guys at least once or twice recently. Good stuff!

what a great Coach #JoeMazzulla 🎉 and his entire coaching staff #BostonCeltics 🏆

One of the best defensive performances I’ve seen in a finals in a long time . Pure dominance

The level of discipline from Boston was hella impressive. I’m hoping Coach Charles Lee can bring a little bit of that effort and attention to detail to Charlotte.

Amazing coaching 👏

When they beat the Pacers in close games. I knew the Celtics would win, and they did. They knew how to close out games. It was not a surprise to me, they beat Dallas in 5 games.

Ben is everything what's right in life.

Is this the first Thinking Basketball x NBA crossover video?! Congrats Ben, you do the best basketball film breakdowns, imo, so this is well deserved!!

Masterful!

I been said this make Tatum the last line of defense because he has the ability to check most centers so when there is pre switches ain’t no mismatches at all and we can switch everything so easy shooting the gaps

Mazzulla was allowed to improve as a coach. That’s huge while certain other teams would probably have fired him last season. So, improved coach + 5 all stars + White = a title.

Prior to the All Star break I dubbed this era of NBA basketball the 'Age of the International Center.' This was an acknowledgement of the dominating, winning effect of the best of the best bigs in the NBA: Jokic, Embiid, Antetokounmpo, Gobert, Towns, Sabonis, Markkanen, etc. I did not anticipate that the Boston Celtics- whose premiere players are versatile wings- would end up winning the chip. A deeper dive into the roster of said rival team, however, would reveal that the Celtics are, in fact, at the cutting edge of this era, with a total of 3 internationally born centers on their roster: Kristaps Porzingis (Latvia), Al Horford (Dominican Republic), and Neemias Queeta (Portugal). Much like an imposing offensive line in football, those whose actions have the greatest impact on winning tend to escape notice, instead resigning themselves to heroism of the unsung variety. Doing the dirty work, and allowing your teammates the glory of favor and adulation of the public. Nonetheless, the foundation, the formula, the championship recipe for this year's Celtics team does in fact confirm my observations of where the league is, and the direction it is going. The next two decades of professional basketball will be very much about the giants of the world defying every known principle of physics and human kinesiology to both dazzle and dominate in the sport of basketball. The Age of the International Center is here, and it ain't going nowhere anytime soon.

That works because JT is tall and strong. It's a case of great roster building and Jalen Brown working hard on his game.

Why is no one talking about how the official NBA channel posted a Thinking Basketball vid?!

JB legit turned NASA down to follow his NBA path. Dudes scary smart lol

This was incredible to withess

we, the logical, smart and non-toxic sector of lebron fans have loved him since the day he was born. we wholeheartedly acknowledge him as the undisputed 9th greatest of all time.

I'm not good with basketball analytics, so a genuine question here - is this all for real? Because it looks like various plays happen and then analysts like TB say this and that happens to do this and to shut down that. Like the infamous 'the curtains are blue because author wants to represent sadness', and in reality the curtains are just blue with no reason. I mean I don't want to diminish coaching and analysts staff work, but my take is that it is much simpler. What I've seen is that Boston had a much better roster and easier path to finals. Mavs playerd 17 games prior finals, had to score 2,116 points, and had 6 days of rest. Luka was gassed out all the time, Kyrie was shut down psychologically and other players missed open shots all the time. Boston had 15 games, had to score 1,632 points, had 9 days of rest and played home. And everyone except Tatum brought their A game. Tatum only played good when Celtics were up 20 or after 3-0. btw I believe Celtics would've won anyway even if both teams had a hard time reaching finals and Kyrie showed up, but it would've been 4-3 Celtics, rather than 4-0 (I do believe it was a sweep and that one win in Dallas was kinda intentional)

The Celtics and TWolves have the best defensive team in the concluding season. The big difference is the coaching style. While the Celtics remained focus in defense ' till the end, the Wolves suddenly collapsed in the WCF because their coach didn't make the switches they should be doing and was unable to push his players to be more physical like the Celtics. The author was right, the Celtics as a team is more cerebral.

This is what they should be doing on ESPN. None of the bs they’re doing rn for clicks.

Joe may have obsessive compulsive disorder and that may be a good thing. I'm sure he studies films a lot trying to find weaknesses in other teams that Celtics can exploit. He's probably the most analytical coach in the league. Jealous people and critics will make excuses, he's gifted, they played nobody, blah blah while Celtics will continue to dominate. Like Tatum said, "we'll just have to keep winning" to shut people up.

thanks

So basically he had White and Holiday playing Center on offense, and had Tatum playing center on defense. Joe is a basketball genius

The ☘️ schooled the entire league, all season which is why they had by far the best record and a historically dominant playoff run.

It’s so funny to me at 5:38 how Luka complains to the refs for a foul when that basket shouldn’t have counted to begin with.

*I’VE BEEN ASKING FOR YEARS. BY NOW I KNOW HE SEES MY COMMENTS. WHEN WILL WE GET A “THINKING BOXING” CHANNEL WITH THIS ANALYTICAL DATA COLLECTION AND ATTENTION TO DETAIL AND STATS?!*

I used to not be a Joe fan, let's just put it that way. Now, he has proven that he's learned from his past mistakes, and he's gotten them to the promise land. He's young, around my age, and already a champ coach. Any of my fellow Bostonians, and massholes, should be grateful we have a coach like Joe.

Thinking Basketball!!!!