Joe Mazzulla not feeling pressure from Celtics before Knicks game

The 2024-25 Boston Celtics are a rarity in the modern NBA: a reigning champion that was able to keep its roster mostly intact.

Thirteen of the 15 players on the Celtics team that lifted the Larry O’Brien Trophy return this season, including Joe Mazzulla’s entire playoff rotation. Unsurprisingly, NBA oddsmakers and GMs alike see Boston as the clear favorite to win it all again, something no team has done in back-to-back years since 2018.

Are the Celtics feeling the pressure of those championship expectations? According to Mazzulla, absolutely not.

“Zero. No pressure,” Boston’s notoriously intense head coach said Monday. “We’re all going to be dead soon, and it really doesn’t matter anymore. So zero pressure. You either win or you don’t. And when you win, you try to forget it a week later, and when you lose, you try to forget it a week later. It’s not pressure. It’s an opportunity. We have an opportunity here for the next few years, as long as we’re together — I’ve said this in the past — we have an opportunity to move the organization forward, to duplicate the tradition and the history of what this organization has.

“And what else would you expect from someone who expects you to win all the time? I wouldn’t want someone to expect you to lose all the time. That would be debilitating. So we have an expectation to win. We have great character, great talent, and we just have to work to maximize that and try to trust the players to do that.”