After the Celtics Game 3 win, Jayson Tatum shared that coach Joe Mazzulla likes to show the team clips from other sports, specifically UFC, as a motivational tool.
“Joe [Mazzulla] does a great job of showing us clips and things from different sports,” Tatum said after the game. “He’s a big UFC fan. Showing us fights of people in intense situations just trying to translate that to the game of basketball. The closer you are to winning, the closer they are to surviving. And basically just trying to remind us that we’ve still got a long way to go.”
Mazzulla recalled one UFC fight in particular when asked about it. It was the fight when light heavyweight champion Alex Pereira responded to a low blow in his fight against Jamahal Hill, versus how another fighter allowed the same foul to take him off his game.
“There’s a lot of them (that I show),” Mazzulla said. “Usually every single fight. But I think it was (UFC) 302. The guy gets hit in the nuts, complains to the ref and gets distracted, and then he gets choked out the next round. So he lost his focus. You see Pereira gets hit in the nuts, looks at the referee, knocks the guy out five seconds later.
“So it’s the approach to what happens to you and how you handle it. The closer you think you are to beating someone, the closer you are to getting your ass kicked.”
Boston only need to win one more game, or in Mazzulla’s terms, entering one more fight to become this year’s NBA champions.
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