Boston Celtics
“I don’t think he was as bad as people made him out to be. I don’t think Batman was as good as we made him out to be.”
Joe Mazzulla is a fan of “The Dark Knight”. (Meleck Eldahshoury for The Boston Globe)
October 27, 2026 | 7:51 PM
2 minutes to read
When it comes to Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla’s affinity for films, most of it revolves around “The Town” and Doug MacRay’s crew.
But Mazzulla is also a fan of “The Dark Knight” — so much so that he has revealed this week that he has a tattoo of the villain of the film, The Joker.
Appearing on Derrick White’s podcast, “White Noise”, Mazzulla offered a classic response about why the film’s villain — portrayed by Heath Ledger in an Oscar-winning performance — resonates with him so much.
“I mean, we could do a whole other podcast on just that alone,” Mazzulla said of The Joker and the tattoo. “But like, I don’t think he was as bad as people made him out to be. I don’t think Batman was as good as we made him out to be. And like the tattoo is like — there are many meanings to it. But it’s like the duality of, like, you could try to do good, and you’re gonna let people down doing good.
“And you could, the other side of who you are is — you don’t always like parts of yourself, so to speak, and you have to learn how to like those and get better at them, and so it’s like the duality of all that and the relationship between the two of them and how they made each other better, and it’s a beautiful duality of life, and it’s one of my favorite tattoos.”
This is not the first time that Mazzulla has praised “The Dark Knight” — as he admitted in 2024 that he made Celtics star Jayson Tatum watch the film with him en route to the team’s championship run.
According to Mazzulla, the film offered plenty of lessons on how to deal with pressure — citing the scene in the film where Batman interrogates The Joker at the police station.
“So when we were working on ok, this is how we’re going to handle expectations, pressure,” Mazzulla said on “Pardon My Take”. “This is what we need to do. So we’re watching the scene where Batman goes into the interrogation room with Joker and they’re talking and Batman’s like ‘Why do you want to kill me? And like the Joker starts laughing.
“He’s like, ‘I don’t want to kill you. He’s like, I need you. You complete me.’ And it was like the coolest moment. Like good and evil has to coexist. Differences have to coexist in order to bring the best out of each other and the people around you. So like, ‘Dark Knight,’ great movie.”
Conor Ryan is a staff writer covering the Bruins, Celtics, Patriots, and Red Sox for Boston.com, a role he has held since 2023.
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