Celtics

Joe Mazzulla explains his fascination with ‘The Town’

“If we ever decided to rob Fenway, I was like, ‘We could probably really get away with this.’ How could you not go to Fenway and think you couldn’t rob it?”

Joe Mazzulla’s interest in "The Town" came to light at the beginning of last year. Barry Chin/Globe Staff

By Kaley Brown

April 19, 2024

Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla’s love for “The Town” is no secret.

He hasn’t elaborated on how his interest in the film came to fruition until now.

Mazzulla appeared on Barstool Sports’ “Pardon My Take” and explained his personal history with the iconic 2010 movie.

“How can you go to Fenway and not think about robbing it”-Joe Mazzulla describing his love for the town pic.twitter.com/RDtKUl96QI
— Pardon My Take (@PardonMyTake) April 19, 2024

“As an assistant, I watched it two to three times a week, easy,” Mazzulla said. “We do most of our work after the games, so you have to stay up late at night. I never liked waking up with work to do from the day before. When I was an assistant, and I had to turn in my postgame edits, I would go home and just work from 11 p.m. to 1 a.m. I needed something to kind of keep me up or keep me going.

“There was a three-movie shuffle (the other two were “Whiplash” and “The Dark Knight”) that I would turn on in order to get me through the game so that I could get to bed. The Town ended up being one of them. It’s not something that I’m obsessed with to the point where I’m still watching it. That was a part of my postgame process that helped me.”

Although it sounds like Mazzulla has since cut back on his weekly viewing sessions, the coach certainly didn’t hide his obsession in his first year as the team’s head coach in 2023.

The first time he talked about “The Town” was when he told NBC Sports Boston’s Brian Scalabrine in January of last year that he would watch the movie four times each week. Mazzulla explained to Scalabrine that as the Celtics’ head coach, the film is “a Boston mindset.”

Then, after the Celtics beat the Philadelphia 76ers in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Semifinals in May, Mazzulla wore a sweatshirt that said, “Whose car we gonna take?”

The quote comes from Jem Coughlin (Jeremy Renner) responding to Doug MacRay (Ben Affleck) saying that the two of them are going to commit an unspecified criminal act.

Mazzulla went on to tell the “Pardon My Take” hosts about how “The Town” impacts his day-to-day life in the city of Boston.

“Randomly throughout the day, assistants will just throw phrases out there from the movie,” he said. “Any time I walk down North End, I’m like, ‘Say your prayers.’”

The sophomore Celtics head coach also talked about the impact that the film’s Fenway Park heist scene had on him, explaining how he can’t attend a Red Sox game without thinking about it.

“I went to Fenway the other day, and I was literally looking at exit strategies to rob Fenway,” Mazzulla said. “If we ever decided to rob Fenway, I was like, ‘We could probably really get away with this.’ How could you not go to Fenway and think you couldn’t rob it?”