Playoff basketball pretty much like regular season, Boston coach says
There's been a notion in the NBA for years, one that says the game changes when the post-season rolls around.
Joe Mazzulla disagrees.
In the eyes of the Boston coach, nothing really changes from the regular season to the playoffs. Show up and play. That's what he expected when the season started in October, that's what he expects now and it sounds like that's what he'll expect if the Celtics are still playing when the NBA Finals roll around in June, too.
“To me, I know it's mundane and the playoffs create a lot of hysteria, but there's no difference between a regular-season and a playoff game,” Mazzulla said. “You've just got to bring it, mentally, physically emotionally. You've just got to bring it and you've got to execute.”
There seem to be some who agree with Mazzulla's way of thinking.
Take Denver centre Nikola Jokic, for example.
“We will win or we will lose,” Jokic said. “We will see what's going to happen. Hopefully we can win at home. After that, if we lose, we have another opportunity.”
It really can't get simpler than that.
There are certainly some arguments to be made that playoff basketball and regular-season basketball are different. Entering Sunday — albeit with a much smaller sample size — teams were scoring 103.8 points per game so far in Round 1, down 9.1 per cent from the regular-season rate of 114.2 per game. Other notable stat drops: field-goal percentage (45 per cent playoffs, 47 regular season) and 3-point percentage (34 per cent playoffs, 37 regular season).
“I think there's a difference, for sure,” Celtics forward Jaylen Brown said. “It's a lot more intense. The pressure is a little bit up. But at the end of the day, it's just basketball . ... We shouldn't see a difference.”