Joe Mazzulla pitches off-the-rails NBA rule changes in wild podcast appearance

Have you been craving more fights in the NBA? You and Boston Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla think the same way, then. And that's a good thing — we think. The Celtics idiosyncratic head coach went on the Zolak & Bertrand show on NBC Sports Boston, where he pitched a few NBA rule changes: power plays and... fighting.

The power play idea might have a little merit, actually. Mazzulla said "Basketball's one of the only sports that doesn't have a power play... we should have a power play... let's say you get a technical or let's say you get a take foul. You get the one shot but you're not really rewarded for that because if you miss it, you don't get the reward for the take foul... on a take foul technical, you have to play five-on-four for five seconds, or three passes."

It might be tough to implement this, considering how short Mazzulla suggests the power play should be — does a guy just have to stay in the backcourt for five seconds? Does the game stop when the power play ends so he can check back in? The logistics would be hard to figure out for basketball, but it's really not a crazy idea.

Maybe NBA teams can pick if they want a dead-ball free-throw or if they want 10 seconds of a power play. It's like a penalty in football — teams have the choice of accepting or declining the penalty, but that's not an option for any infraction in the NBA.

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Joe Mazzulla wants to bring back fighting

His other idea doesn't actually have anything to do with the rules of the league, he just wants to bring back fighting. Simple as that. "The biggest thing that we rob people of, from an entertainment standpoint, is you can’t fight anymore. I wish you could bring back fighting," Mazzulla said.

He didn't necessarily vouch for full-on brawls, but moreso questioned why the referees shut down altercations so quickly and prohibits players from leaving the bench area during a scuffle. "I just don’t get why some sports are allowed to clear the benches. They have bats and weapons, we don’t. We just have a ball. The other sport has one of the hardest surfaces and playing instrument in pucks and sticks and we’re not allowed to throw down a little bit?"

NBA players love pretending like they're going to fight... and then not actually fighting. If Joe Mazzulla was in charge, they'd actually be fighting.