NBA Fans Stunned By Celtics HC Joe Mazzulla’s ‘Rain Man’ Ability To Recall Plays From Memory

Getty Image

Now this his Boston Celtics are in the NBA Finals, C’s head coach Joe Mazzulla is being introduced to a national audience for perhaps the first time.

In his second season as the Boston Celtics’ head coach, Joe Mazzulla has the organization in a prime position to win its 18th NBA championship, as the team is currently up on the Dallas Mavericks 2-0 in the Best-of-4 series.

Given Mazzulla’s Rain Man-like ability to recall plays from memory, however, it perhaps shouldn’t come as a surprise that the 35-year-old is a potentially championship-caliber coach.

Speaking to the media following Game 2 of the NBA Finals — which the Celtics won by a score of 105-98 — Mazzulla displayed his Rain Man memory by recalling a specific sequence of plays when asked a question about guard Jrue Holiday, who led the Celtics with 26 points on the night.

Mazzulla played college basketball at West Virginia from 2006 to 2011. He was not drafted into the NBA, however, and immediately went into coaching, becoming an assistant at Glenville State in 2011.

Mazzulla spent two years at Glenville State before moving to Fairmont State, where he became the head coach in 2017.

After two seasons as Fairmont’s head coach, Mazzula was hired as an assistant coach by Boston in 2019 and took over as the interim head coach after the dismissal of Ime Udoka in 2022 before being officially hired as the Celtics head coach in 2023.

If Mazzulla does lead the Celtics to the 2024 NBA title — the franchise’s first since 2008 — he’ll become the youngest head coach to win a title in NBA history, besting the record set by 39-year-old Tyronn Lue when he won the title with the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2016. While Bill Russell did it at the age of 34 years old in 1968, he was also a player at the time.