Jayson Tatum Reveals Celtics Coach Uses UFC Fighters Choke-Outs to Teach Calmness

The Boston Celtics are one win away from hoisting the Larry O’Brien trophy in the 2024 NBA Finals. The job isn’t finished, even though a 3-0 Playoff series lead has never been overturned in the NBA. Celtics forward Jayson Tatum knows they can’t take their foot off the gas now, revealing that head coach Joe Mazzulla shows them videos of UFC fighters getting choked out to keep their mentality right.

“Joe does a great job of showing us clips from different sports. He’s a big UFC fan, showing us fights of people, I’m not gonna speak on the terminology of the UFC but put him in a chokehold and sh*t. Like they’re about to tap out, and you see the guy who’s winning relaxing because they know they’re about to win, you give the other person life. Just translating that to basketball. The closer you are to winning, the closer that they are to surviving.”

Showing your superstar players the life being drained from a professional fighter’s eyes in a chokehold to hammer home the importance of not easing yourself off opponents is quite a coaching strategy. It is clearly working, so there’s no apparent need for Mazzulla to change anything about what he’s doing.

The Celtics need just one more win to finally win their 18th championship, a journey that’s been 16 years in the making since the city’s last triumph in 2008. While the series isn’t over until the fourth win is secure, we have never seen a team overturn an 0-3 series deficit before. The closest anyone has come were these Celtics last season against the Miami Heat, but even they failed.

Coach Mazzulla will be the youngest NBA head coach to win a title since Bill Russell won the 1969 Championship as a player-coach. The 35-year-old is younger than his current starting center, Al Horford, and is establishing his own path toward coaching immortality.

Joe Mazzulla Made His Players Watch Videos Of Killer Whales

Mazzulla has made multiple headlines with his unconventional methods to keep his players locked in. Recently, Celtics forward Sam Hauser revealed that Mazzulla makes the team watch videos of orca/killer whales attacking seals to show the team how important it is to have a killer instinct.

“I would just say he’s like got a unique approach to the game. He pulls things from, like, soccer teams, pulls things from killer whales and how they go about finding food and prey, things like that.”

Celtics big man Luke Kornet has confirmed the story as well, saying that the tactic works.

“He’s pretty unafraid to try something kind of different that might seem sort of weird. But if he believes in it, then he feels the freedom to do it.” It kind of became a thing. It does work. A lot of times the images are more powerful than trying to say something over and over again.”

If the players have bought into these methods and it works for them, there’s no reason to sit on the outside and criticize the unconventional ways in which a soon-to-be championship-winning head coach motivates his team throughout a season where they’ve largely dominated the NBA.