Brad Stevens, the Celtics’ president of basketball operations, confirmed Thursday that Joe Mazzulla will remain as Boston’s coach next season.
Stevens’s confirmation of Mazzulla staying in Boston comes after speculation surrounding his job security after the Celtics’ disappointing 103–84 Games 7 loss to the Heat on Monday. At one point, the Celtics trailed the Heat 0–3 in the series before winning three consecutive games to tie the series at 3–3.
However, Miami dismantled Boston in the series finale, keeping the NBA’s longstanding fact that no team has ever come back to win a playoff series after facing a 3–0 deficit in a best-of-seven series. But despite the frustrating end to the season, Stevens said Mazzulla will be the franchise’s coach and believes he is best person for the job.
“Was he perfect? Would he like to have some moments back? Every coach would,” Stevens said, per Jay King of The Athletic. “… And at the same time, our players, our staff, everybody around him believe in him.”
Stevens also credited Mazzulla’s leadership and his willingness to continue to growth in his craft.
“He’s a terrific leader,” Stevens said. “He’ll only get better at anything that he can learn from this year because he’s constantly trying to learn. And, he’s accountable.”
Mazzulla led the Celtics to a 57–25 regular-season mark in his first season as head coach. Boston entered this year’s playoffs as the No. 2 seed.
The Celtics defeated the No. 7 seeded Hawks in six games and knocked off the No. 3 seeded 76ers in a grueling seven-game series to earn an appearance in the 2023 Eastern Conference finals.
Check out the 49th-most memorable moment in World Cup history, this one taking place in 2015 between the Matildas of Australia and Brazil. See what happened here!
Maxxine Dupri joined Ryan Satin on the 112th episode of “Out of Character” and discussed her role being a part of with Maximum Models with Mace and Monsoor and her work with LA Knight.
A Western Conference general manager said anonymously that there’s no ‘overwhelming sentiment’ that the Los Angeles Lakers are interested in free agent Kyrie Irving, pinning that interest as mostly coming from LeBron James. The Western Conference GM said quote: “There’s not an overwhelming sentiment from them like, ‘We gotta go get Kyrie.’ It’s just LeBron.” Shannon Sharpe reacts to this statement, then discuss whether LeBron should want Kyrie or not.
Maxxine Dupri joined Ryan Satin on the 112th episode of “Out of Character” and shared the story of how she found out she had the role of Maxxine Dupri after being called up to the WWE Main Roster.
Patrick Everson talked to an oddsmaker and sharp about the Heat-Nuggets NBA Finals. Read here for the sportsbooks’ perspective and how one bettor stands to win almost a million dollars if this team wins.
USC’s opening opponent for the 2023 basketball season has been revealed, as the Trojans will face off against Kansas State in Las Vegas on Nov. 6 in Bronny James’s college debut, according to a report from college basketball insider Jon Rothstein.
At the season tip-off event in Las Vegas, Oregon will also face off against Georgia as part of a doubleheader. Tip-off times, as well as the official announcement of the two matchups are TBD.
James, the eldest son of NBA legend LeBron James, committed to USC in May following a long recruitment involving several schools. In the end, James committed to the Trojans to stay close to home in Los Angeles. The 6’ 3” combo guard was a McDonald’s All-American and was one of the consensus top 25 recruits in the country.
Coach Andy Enfield anticipates that James will be in line for early playing time, and given his stature and lineage, all eyes will be on the James and the Trojans this fall as they look to compete for a Pac-12 title.
A Nepalese Sherpa is calling out Mount Everest hikers and trekking companies after encountering what he’s calling the “dirtiest camp” he’s ever seen.
While making the climb up the mountain during this year’s season, Tenzi Sherpa encountered piles of garbage and abandoned tents at Camp IV—which is typically the final base camp on the South Col for climbers who attempt the trek from the southeast ridge in Nepal.
“The dirtiest camp I have ever seen,” Tenzi captioned an Instagram video, which pans across the trash-covered camp. “We can see the lots of tents, empty oxygen bottles, steel bowls, spoons, sanitation pads, paper.” He explained that the cleanup job is unfortunately often left to those who are there to responsibly climb Everest.
“I feel so sad every time,” Tenzi continued, noting that expedition groups and companies cut their companies logos off their tents before leaving them behind. He added that a clean mountain campaign was enacted several years ago, but it doesn’t do much good if the trekking companies won’t do their part.
It’s mandatory for Everest climbers to bring their waste down from the mountain, and in doing so, they claim back a garbage deposit of $4,000 from the government. However, enforcing the rules can be difficult at camps above 25,000 feet high.
“Liaison officers [are] just getting paid for nothing,” Tenzi wrote. “I would like to request to the government to punish that companies who leave their trash on mountain. It’s a huge problem we [are] all facing.”
Unfortunately, trash left on Mount Everest is hardly a new problem, as rising tourism is creating more than just long lines and overcrowding. Volunteers with the Everest Cleaning Campaign, which was likely what Tenzi was referring to, removed 10 metric tons of trash (as well as four dead bodies) in just 45 days back in 2019. However, clearly there is still a lot of work to be done.
There is one college softball coach who understands what it takes to do what Patty Gasso is doing at Oklahoma.
Her Sooners have won a record 48 games in a row (and counting). Last weekend, they eclipsed the previous Division I record of 47, set by Arizona under Hall of Fame coach Mike Candrea in the late 1990s. Now retired, Candrea has been fielding calls about the old record lately, praising Gasso and Oklahoma: He knows, after all, how difficult it is to win like this. And he also knows how difficult it is to do what Gasso is trying to do next.
Think winning 47 (or 48) in a row is hard? Try winning three consecutive titles.
Gasso and the Sooners are the No. 1 seed in the Women’s College World Series, beginning Thursday in Oklahoma City, which they have won each of the past two years. If a team’s status as favorites can somehow be understated by a top seed, that’s the case here, with a squad that has dominated competition in just about every capacity all year long. (Oklahoma leads the nation in both hitting and pitching, with a .462 team OBP and 1.00 team ERA, respectively.) But it takes more than talent to win it all back-to-back-to-back. The only program with three consecutive titles is UCLA, which won in 1988, ’89 and ’90. To keep winning at this time of year requires talent, yes, but also incredible focus and more than a little bit of luck.
It’s one thing to look like the best team in the nation for three straight years. It’s another entirely to win three straight championships.
Just ask Candrea. He won eight championships at Arizona—including three separate pairs of consecutive ones. His Wildcats won five titles in the seven seasons from 1991 to ’97 and were easily the program of the decade. But they never managed to win three in a row.
“The biggest opponent was ourselves. It wasn’t necessarily who we were playing,” Candrea says. “I think I see a lot of that in Oklahoma right now.”
Sarah Phipps/The Oklahoman/USA Today Network
Candrea says he tried to make sure his teams did not get caught in the particulars of their win streak or of what it would mean to extend their championship reign; Gasso says much the same. It’s standard operating procedure for any coach steering a team under tremendous pressure. Yet it’s easier said than done.
“Athletes at that level, they just kind of put their heads down and get to enjoying the process, enjoying what they’re doing,” Candrea says. “They’re not really counting how many they have or what’s next. And that becomes an expectation—you know, at the end of the day, the expectation was to win a national championship.”
Gasso and Candrea have been linked for a long time. They met in her first year as a D-I head coach when Oklahoma and Arizona played in 1995: The Sooners were just trying to find a pathway to success, while the Wildcats were at the height of their powers. Arizona won, 12–1. That started a trend that took years to abate: Gasso lost her first 10 matchups against Candrea. But she was grateful for what she learned from those losses. And that made it all the more special to break his record all these years later.
“It’s Arizona and Mike Candrea, and what Arizona did back in the day was phenomenal,” Gasso said at her postgame press conference after win No. 47. “He is the reason why I had to learn how to do things different. Because when I was here as a young coach, he was run-ruling the daylights out of us. I just had to take it and learn. And I told him that—we’ve become good enough friends that we share those things.”
Watching from afar these past few years, Candrea says he’s seen Gasso grow far more comfortable with herself as a coach than she was in those early years. “She’s maybe found that niche to take pressure off herself and take pressure off the game,” he says. That’s reflected in her team, which always seems to be cheering for each other, having fun, celebrating the little things. Advice on going for a third straight championship? Candrea doesn’t think Gasso needs any. But he sees her team doing much of what he believes it should take.
“A lot of it is just looking at the present moment, not getting too far ahead of yourself,” Candrea says. “It’s making sure that you respect every opponent and you fear none.”
For years, Candrea had people tell him that Arizona’s record win streak would stand forever. He wasn’t sure he ever quite believed that. Now that it’s fallen? He can’t imagine a more fitting team to have done it—and to potentially go even further.
“Streaks are made to be broken,” Candrea says. “And I can’t think of a better team right now.”
