As the Boston Celtics were preparing to close out their historic 18th NBA championship last week, the Red Sox were in Toronto, bussing back to their hotel to try and catch the glorious ending.

“We got back to the hotel with like, four minutes left in the fourth quarter, so we got to see the most important part,” Zack Kelly told the Herald before Monday’s Blue Jays series opener at Fenway. The Celtics and their brand-new trophy would also be in attendance for a special pregame ceremony.

Several Red Sox players are basketball fans, though not necessarily of the Celtics. (Kenley Jansen is a serious Lakers fan.) But Kelly’s interest in the Celtics is unique. He was looking forward to speaking with head coach Joe Mazzulla because their origin stories share something of an overlap.

“It’s a small D-2 conference in West Virginia. Glenville State, Fairmont State, in the middle of absolutely nowhere like my school was, Concord University,” Kelly said of Mazzulla’s first coaching jobs. “Cool connection.”

“It’s a very hidden collection of schools in West Virginia. Not a ton of schools in West Virginia, it’s not the biggest state, and obviously it’s headlined by WVU,” Kelly said, referring to West Virginia University, where Mazzulla played college ball.

Mazzulla helped WVU reach the 2010 Final Four. He began his coaching journey as an assistant at Glenville State in 2011, then took an assistant coaching job at Fairmont State in 2013. In the spring of 2017, Fairmont named him head coach.

As a starting pitcher for the Concord Mountain Lions in 2014, Kelly saw a fair amount of Mazzulla’s team.

“Played each other every year. They were better at basketball than they were at baseball,” the righty said with a grin.

There’s another West Virginia connection even closer to home.

“Our director of pitching was my pitching coach that recruited me at Concord,” Kelly said of Justin Willard, whom the Red Sox hired last December. “Lot of D-2 West Virginia connections around Boston!”

Kelly also has another interesting NBA connection, which dates back even farther.

“JJ Redick is from my hometown. We all played basketball because we wanted to be like JJ Redick,” the Roanoke, Virginia native said.  “We’d be in the gym trying to shoot like JJ. We all wanted to go to Duke. And now he’s big-time.”

Kelly has been one of Boston’s best bullpen arms in June, entering Tuesday with a 0.77 ERA over 11 ⅔ innings, with 16 strikeouts, three walks, one hit, and one earned run. Could he have chosen to pursue a career on the court, instead of the diamond?

“I was pretty good, I could’ve played D-3 basketball, but didn’t want to pay that much to go to school,” he said.

Plus, he gets to play Major League Baseball, instead.

“Yeah, I didn’t think that was in the cards at the time, though. It worked out,” he said modestly.

Kelly is a proponent of players becoming coaches and managers.

“He’s a great basketball mind. Obviously, he doesn’t have any head-coaching experience, but I think he knows the game, and I think he’ll do fine because he’s been there and he understands it,” Kelly said. “I think he’ll be a players’ coach. I think it’s easier to relate to players when you’ve been in their shoes, and when the players know you’ve been in their shoes. You see a lot more stuff than just Xs and Ox too, so I think that would be good.”

Among his own teammates, he sees Rob Refsnyder taking a similar path someday.

“I think he’d be good. He’s the man,” Kelly said. “Really good veteran. He’s kind of taken the reins a little bit as a leader, now that Trevor (Story) went down. He’s been huge for us.”

He also sees himself “probably” doing that down the road. “Just try to stay around the game in some way,” he said.

“Probably at some point,” Kelly said of a potential coaching or managing career down the road. “Just try to stay around the game in some way.”

For now, he’s focused on playing, and keeping the Red Sox rolling.

“Don’t let the Sox get hot,” he said. “We got some dogs. (Jarren) Duran: All-Star. Hell yeah. (Connor) Wong, a bunch of guys, we got five or six guys that should be there. Will they? I don’t know. But they should be. Deserve to be.”

“It’s ridiculous that Duran is 19th in AL outfielders and he has a top-10 WAR in all of baseball. That’s (expletive). You can put that in print, too.”

Red Sox injury updates

After undergoing an MRI on Monday, Triston Casas was scheduled to meet with the doctor at 5 p.m. Tuesday to review the results.

Liam Hendriks (2023 elbow surgery) is scheduled to throw his first bullpen at the end of this week, Alex Cora announced.