On September 22 of last year, Joe Mazzulla was promoted to interim coach of the Celtics. At the time, he was still learning. At only 34 years old, he was forced to shuffle his team’s personnel a month before the season began despite having been a Boston assistant since the summer of 2019.

When faced with such a difficult duty, Mazzulla thought of consulting a veteran of 15 seasons in the NBA, point guard JJ Redick. On Wednesday morning’s episode of Redick’s podcast, The Old Man & The Three, he discussed his efforts to recruit the legendary Duke.

Redick began the narrative by recounting a vacation to New England he had taken in the previous autumn, which was cut short when he received a call notifying him that Mazzulla was now the Celtics’ head coach.

Eventually, Mazzulla accompanied Redick on a game of golf in an effort to entice the burgeoning multimedia sensation to Boston.

Mazzulla remarked, “I believed we had a chance of catching you. “Then we walk out of the clubhouse after going through it and you ask, ‘So when does training camp start?'” I then say, “Uh, Monday.” It was also Friday.

Mazzulla proceeded to make light of Redick’s ignorance while he chuckled.

I thought, ‘This guy put all this thought into wanting to be a coach and he doesn’t even know when the season starts,'” Mazzulla said with a grin. “Despite that, I had a nice time. I enjoyed it since I knew you weren’t wasting my time and believed you were sincere.

The Celtics improved by six games from the previous season to 57-25 without Redick, but they were defeated by the Heat in the Eastern Conference finals.