Mike Conley has experienced a lot entering his 20th season in the NBA, but Boston Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla gave him a new experience on Wednesday - working as a coach on the bench.
As The Athletic’s Jay King detailed, Mazzulla put the veteran point guard in charge of substitutions for the team’s 114-93 victory over the Charlotte Hornets in an extension of a player-coach relationship that has developed since Conley joined the Celtics.
“Joe approached me before the game and said, ‘What would you think about doing the rotations tonight?’” Conley said, per King. “I was like, ‘S***, I’ll do whatever.’ I told him I had never done that before and it was cool for me to experience that.”
The coaching staff helped map out a rotation before the game, but Conley, wearing his uniform but also holding a folded rotation sheet, was still tasked with on-the-fly decision making in his first try as a coach.
Guard Derrick White picked up his second foul just over two minutes into the game, and Conley had to pick whether he wanted to trust his starter and risk taking a third early foul, or call for an early sub and disrupt the gameplan.
“That kind of blew up the whole cheat sheet,” Conley said. “I was like, ‘Oh, no, now I’ve got to make a sub.’” Conley elected to give White a chance with some words of encouragement.
“You have two fouls,” Conley told White. “You cannot foul. Coach is trusting me right now. I’m gonna leave you in.”
White stayed in the game and was able to avoid taking his third foul, allowing the team’s rotation to stay intact as planned. As similar decisions popped up throughout the game, Conley discussed them with Mazzulla, allowing the two to get a better understanding of their interactions in the upcoming season.
“It’s a lot harder than you think sometimes,” Conley said. “You’re looking down, and you’re trying to follow a strict regimen, but then you look up and a guy is winded. Or a guy maybe made four or five buckets in a row, and it’s like, I don’t want to sub him out yet. It’s just feeling out the game.
“So, I got to sit next to Joe, and he walked me through some things. Just [things like], ‘I wouldn’t take anybody out right now. This five is rolling.’ So, it’s just really learning the mindset of coaching and what it’s like kind of being in control of that.”
As the game continued, according to King, the conversations evolved from moment-to-moment lineup decisions to overarching basketball topics and how they view the game.
“[Mazzulla] was like, ‘We haven’t called a play. We haven’t drawn up anything. We haven’t gone over anything on the scout. And just, look, it can be done. Guys can work it out themselves. And if we can get this kind of connectivity going forward, it makes everybody’s job easier,’” Conley said of his interaction with the head coach.
“Obviously, we won’t go through every game without a scout or without plays, but it was just kind of seeing the game from his perspective and what kind of gets him going. Different defensive plays, different possessions that he flagged as, ‘That’s one of my favourites right there. And this is why.’ And he was kind of just explaining that to me. So, that was cool to kind of get in his mind.”
Conley is playing on the fourth team of his career entering his age-39 season. It is unclear what his role on the team will be - he played 18.4 minutes per game with the Minnesota Timberwolves last season and averaged 4.5 points per game, both career lows - but Mazzulla is looking to use his knowledge and experiences to help guide the younger players on the roster.
“He’s been around 20 years,” Mazzulla said after the game. “Great teams, great coaches, so being able to pick his brain and at the same time, all of us being on the same page about how we want to attack. And I think it’s always good, especially when you get new guys and in the preseason, you always want the players to be able to see what the coaches see and vice versa, so that you just have more alignment when decisions need to be made.”
Conley already has the respect of many of his Celtics teammates, given his long and storied career that includes an All-Star appearance, four NBA Sportsmanship Awards and one second-team All-Defensive Team appearance, and he’s embracing this new role that may be more mentor than player.
“[The role in Boston is] new, it’s a learning experience, but it’s one I’m going to snatch and roll with it,” Conley said. “And I’ll take it by the horns and do the best I can with it, either being a player, being a coach, being a teammate, whatever that may be for the night.”