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BOSTON — Joe Mazzulla has made his thoughts on Coach of the Year clear. He believes it’s a stupid award.

On Monday, he suggested an alternative, saying he wished the award was replaced by something that wouldn’t go to just one person when so many are involved in a team’s success.

“I would like to see that changed to staff or organization, for sure. I think those things are important,” Mazzulla said. “If it was Staff of the Year, it’s different, (or) if it’s Organization of the Year. But at the end of the day, I haven’t made one basket all year. Our staff hasn’t made a basket. We haven’t got a block. We haven’t ran back on defense. We didn’t play a back-to-back. We didn’t have to play hurt. We haven’t really done s—t. So if you don’t have the guys you know to be able to put you in position, it doesn’t really matter.”

With his Boston Celtics one of the NBA’s biggest surprises this season, Mazzulla is a frontrunner to win Coach of the Year. After being announced as one of the three finalists, he shared on Monday how he handles the praise coming his way when he doesn’t necessarily want it.

“How do I deal with it?” Mazzulla said. “I mean, I’m a human. We all have a sense — we talked about this the other day — I mean, I battle pride, you battle all those things. I think for me, it’s, I’m going to blank on the Proverbs, but the test of praise is just as important as a test of criticism. I read Proverbs a lot, (I) read Ecclesiastes, the books of wisdom. There’s a bunch of better leaders that have gone through a lot before me. David, Solomon. Those guys were much better than I was. They went through a lot of good and bad. I like studying those two the most. I flock to David and Solomon. Good dudes. Struggled, had success. I guess we’re still talking about them, though. But they’re not going to be talking about me 2,000 years from now.”

Whether or not people will be talking about them in the year 4026, Mazzulla and the Celtics have earned plenty of positive coverage this season. Expected to experience a significant dropoff after losing Jayson Tatum to injury and several other key players throughout the offseason, they instead earned the second seed in the Eastern Conference at 56-26. With Tatum back and operating at a high level, the Celtics beat the Philadelphia 76ers 123-91 in Game 1 of their first-round series and are widely considered a top championship contender.

Naturally, Mazzulla has been lauded for his work in keeping the Celtics near the top of the standings. But even while receiving so much credit, Mazzulla has tried to deflect it whenever asked about himself.

“Praise is just as dangerous as criticism. You just have to remind yourself that neither one lasts too long, and really, at the end of the day, they’re going to forget about you eventually,” he said. “This is all just a short-term thing. It’s going to last a few years, and then 10, 15 years from now, no one’s going to talk about you, so it really doesn’t matter.”

Though Mazzulla has tried to steer the conversation away from himself, guard Payton Pritchard suggested the coach’s mindset has set the tone for the entire Celtics organization.

“I think Joe just does an excellent job of holding everybody to a high standard and work ethic and showing up every day and just putting that time in,” Pritchard said. “Everybody just comes in and it doesn’t matter if it’s training staff, weight room. Everybody knows their job and they come in on a high level and they produce every day. Even like the player development staff, they’re on-court probably more than us working their butt off. It definitely starts with Joe and the expectations he has, and the standard that he holds people to.”

The Celtics will host the 76ers for Game 2 on Tuesday night.

“The whole idea of this thing is that everything’s bigger than us,” Mazzulla said. “We’re part of this organization. We have a responsibility and ownership to move it forward for however long we’re here. I can’t be good if I don’t have people around me that are good, and we need each other.”

This article originally appeared in .

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