Celtics contemplating including Jeff Van Gundy to teaching workers: Report initially appeared on NBC Sports activities Boston
The Boston Celtics will lose a minimum of one and presumably two skilled assistant coaches this summer season. However they’re apparently mulling an attention-grabbing contingency plan.
The Celtics are exploring the thought of including senior advisor Jeff Van Gundy to move coach Joe Mazzulla’s teaching workers subsequent season, Marc Stein of The Stein Line reported Sunday.
Van Gundy spent 10-plus seasons as an NBA head coach with the New York Knicks (1995 to 2001) and Houston Rockets (2003 to 2007) earlier than transitioning to a broadcast profession with ESPN. In October 2023, he joined the Celtics as a senior advisor of basketball operations and has been a fixture at practices, dwelling video games and highway journeys whereas additionally spending time with the Maine Celtics of the G-League.
“Jeff’s been nice,” Celtics president of basketball operations Brad Stevens stated on the finish of Boston’s common season in mid-April. ” … I’ll say this, I’ve identified Jeff a very long time and gotten an opportunity to spend so much of time with him through the years. It’s enjoyable watching a sport with him when he doesn’t have to talk in 15- second sound bites. He’s fairly entertaining.”
The Celtics already are shedding high assistant Charles Lee, who lately accepted the Charlotte Hornets’ head coach job, whereas veteran assistant Sam Cassell reportedly has interviewed for a number of NBA head coach openings. By bringing Van Gundy to the bench, Mazzulla would have a helpful useful resource with greater than three a long time of NBA expertise.
“It is actually cool as a result of he has a non-biased perspective towards our group,” Mazzulla stated of Van Gundy after he was employed in October. “And because the season goes on, it turns into exhausting at instances to take a 30,000-foot view, since you’re working with these guys each day and also you’re in it, and also you’re workers is in it.
“So to have a man who can take a step again and see the group from the skin — he is scouting us, so we will know ourselves higher than others as a result of he is taking a look at us each single day and learning us. He has a non-biased perspective. It is like, ‘This is what you are doing nicely, this is what you are not, and this is what I see.’
“To me, that is an enormous weapon to have.”
