Following the Celtics’ victory over the Nets in Brooklyn on Tuesday night, Joe Mazzull was in something of a joking mood. When a reporter asked him a question about Al Horford’s paint touches, Mazzulla used it as an opportunity to express something that was on his mind.

“We talked over the last week or so. We definitely think we need to post (up) more,” Mazzulla said. “I don’t think we’re posting enough.”

Another reporter followed up and asked why.

“I was joking,” Mazzulla replied. “We’re second in (post up) frequency and first in (post up) efficiency.”

The exchange represented a clear response to former Celtics center and now ESPN analyst Kendrick Perkins, who said earlier this week that he believed the C’s weren’t posting up enough despite those rankings. It wasn’t the first time that Mazzulla responded in a press conference to a criticism from Perkins. Last month, Perkins made a comment about the Celtics coach saying that there are two versions of him, saying, “And you wonder, if you take his brain out and you put it in a bird, the bird is going to start flying backward.”

Days later, Mazzulla answered a query about the status of an injured player by saying, “I’m a bird brain, you know I can’t do that.”

In his second season, Mazzulla has taken outside criticism in stride, and even embraces it. He doesn’t mind it, knows it comes with the territory of his position, and hasn’t run from it. In the case of critical comments like ones from Perkins, Mazzulla on Wednesday explained his perspective and how he handles such situations.

“I’ve grown to absolutely endear it and love it,” Mazzulla said. “And I think it’s beautiful. And as I said before, if you wish for things to be different than what they are … it comes with the job, it’s the expectation. It doesn’t mean you can’t have fun. You just can’t take yourself too serious. You should laugh at yourself. You should also laugh at other people. You should love yourself and love other people. And you should just have fun while you’re doing it. So this is the responsibility is handling those expectations. You just have to embrace it.

“I don’t believe in ignoring the noise. I just don’t believe in that because you’re not going to ignore something negative but then wish to get praise. You know what I mean? Everybody lives in this world of, like, I’ll ignore the noise but if someone says something good about you, you should listen to that. You should hear both of it and you should decipher what’s true and then you just kind of move on from there.”

All-Star plans

In his first season as coach last year, Mazzulla coached the All-Star Game. But he doesn’t have that responsibility this season. What will he do with the time off? He skated away from giving out any personal plans, but there is some business planned.

“So I have a list of 10-12 things that we need to get better at as a team,” he said. “And so I’ll go through the calendar of the games and figure out when those things become thematic, when we need to institute them, and how we can approach whether it’s a practice or a shootaround. Making those themes important to where we’re trying to get to, I’ll definitely plan that. That’s probably about it.”

Mazzulla was asked what he’s giving up for Lent.

“Fifteen minutes of silence,” Mazzulla said. “I try to make sure we’re rooted, grounded, get ready for this tough stretch we have coming up … so I want to make sure we’re ready to go. Have like a training camp, so to speak, before we get ready.”

Mazzulla reiterated what he said last week, that he hates breaks.

“I don’t really understand them,” Mazzulla said. “I think you need a break coming from the break. It’s like, what, why’d you take the first break to begin with?”

Tragedy hits KC

Mazzulla had his thoughts with Kansas City, where a mass shooting took place on Wednesday at the Chiefs’ Super Bowl parade that left one dead and at least 20 wounded.

“Terrible,” Mazzulla said. “It just goes to the point of, you never know what someone’s going through in a situation. And it’s also unfortunate that innocent people have to be in the way of things like that. So it’s disheartening to see, in my opinion. You go to something like that to celebrate, and you end up getting something completely different, you know? It’s just tough because of what people go through on a daily basis and how innocent people are impacted by that, you know?” …

Jaylen Brown sat out Wednesday’s game against the Nets due to a right shoulder contusion, while Xavier Tillman (left knee injury management) and Jaden Springer (right ankle impingement) will have to wait to make their Celtics debuts until after the All-Star break. Al Horford (left big toe sprain) sat out on the second night of the back-to-back, as expected.

Ben Simmons missed Wednesday’s game for the Nets due to a left knee effusion.