Joe Mazzulla ready to lead the Boston Celtics in the NBA Finals

Joe Mazzulla and the Boston Celtics are set to take on the Dallas Mavericks in the NBA Finals starting Thursday at 8:30 p.m.

This is the second time in the past three seasons that Boston has reached the NBA Finals but have not won a championship since 2008. For Mazzulla, this is his first ever Finals appearance in just his second year of being the Head Coach. 

During the regular season, the Celtics put together the best season of any team in the NBA. They finished with a league best 64-18 record and have continued to dominate in the playoffs. Playing well on both offense and defense, Mazzulla’s squad has only lost two games the entire postseason. 

Coming off a sweep of the Indianapolis Pacers, the Celtics were able to get some late close-games closeouts to help prepare them moving forward. While the Celtics were able to complete the sweep, three of the four games, the Pacers were leading with under five minutes to go. 

The Finals matchup for Mazzulla will be a difficult one. Two of the best scorers the league has ever seen, Dallas’s Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving, will be Mazzulla’s head-scratching nightmare. Doncic averaged 34 points and 10 assists this season and finished third in MVP voting.

Mazzulla will get a big boost back in his 7-foot-2 center, Kristaps Porzingus who missed the last 10 games due to a calf strain. The Latvian averaged 20 points and seven rebounds for the Celtics this season. Porzingus confirmed he will be active for game one.

Should Mazzulla take the Celtics to the promise land, it would make Mazzulla, a WVU basketball alum, the youngest true head coach to win the NBA Finals. Bill Russel was officially the youngest coach to ever win it at 35, but he also played 41 minutes per game as a player-coach in that 1969 Finals.

At 36 years old, Mazzulla would become the youngest coach to win the title since Russell did. 

The series is set to start for 8:30 p.m ET on Thursday, June 6. The first two games will be held in Boston before the teams travel back to Dallas for games three and four. All games can be watched on ABC or ESPN+.