Assistant coaches are rarely viewed as game-changing hires in the NBA. But could Sam Cassell make a noticeable difference in Boston.
The Celtics reportedly are hiring Cassell as an assistant coach on head coach Joe Mazzulla's staff after the 53-year-old spent three seasons with the Philadelphia 76ers as Doc Rivers' lead assistant. Cassell makes sense for the C's on multiple levels, given his wealth of experience as an NBA player (15 seasons, three NBA titles) and coach (14 seasons with three NBA teams) as well as his familiarity with Boston, where he won a championship as a member of the 2007-08 Celtics.
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Cassell joins a Celtics coaching staff that lacked a veteran NBA voice last season, especially after Damon Stoudamire's departure for Georgia Tech in March. Our Chris Forsberg and ESPN's Bobby Marks believe Cassell's strong personality and willingness to call out players can serve as a great complement to Mazzulla.
"From the outside, it feels like Joe showed himself to be very much a players' coach (who) never trashed the players in the media," Forsberg said Monday in a 1-on-1 conversation with Marks. "Do you need someone in that locker room who can sort of look at them and be like, 'Look, I've been on that stage. You need to up your level of play.' Can that motivate guys?"
Marks, who was the New Jersey Nets' assistant general manager when they made back-to-back NBA Finals appearances in 2002 and 2003, answered in the affirmative.
"I think you need a 'good cop, bad cop' person here," Marks told Forsberg. "Those two years that we went to the Finals with Byron Scott as our head coach -- we had Eddie Jordan who was basically a head coach in waiting, and then certainly Mike O'Koren and Lawrence Frank -- but it was more of an extension of our bench when I looked at Donny Marshall, Anthony Johnson, guys who really didn't play much but were really kind of that bad (cop) -- they were an extension of the coaching staff.
"You can't have three assistant coaches with the same type of personality, right? Like, that's just not going to work. And I think Sam -- he'll call you out. He can can serve as that in-between, between the head coach and the players here. You do need that 'good cop, bad cop' there and I think they certainly have that (with Cassell)."
Cassell has a wealth of experience working with NBA superstars, having coached Kawhi Leonard and Paul George as assistant with the Los Angeles Clippers and Joel Embiid and James Harden more recently in Philadelphia. His next task will be maximizing the talents of Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, who are already one of the NBA's best duos at age 25, and 26, respectively, but still have plenty of room to grow after falling short in the 2023 Eastern Conference Finals.
Cassell has plenty of credibility and knows what it takes to win a title in Boston. If he can hold Tatum, Brown and the rest of Boston's players accountable -- much in the way Ime Udoka did publicly at times during the 2021-22 campaign -- that would go a long way toward the Celtics raising Banner 18.