Kinda makes me want to watch basketball

I'll confess to not being much of a basketball fan. 

Oh, I've watched a ton of it over the years, and have even been to The Garden (the old Garden) plenty of times, including for an exciting playoff game in the 1970's when the Celtics played a Milwaukee Bucks team that featured Kareem Abdul Jabbar, and an exciting Larry Bird-Dominique Wilkins shootout in the 1980s. For that one, I bought scalpers for my husband's birthday, bargaining the scalper down by ten bucks so I could also buy us a couple of beers.

But Jim was the basketball fan in the family, and I haven't paid all that much attention to basketball in general or the Celtics in particular since he died. 

I am, however, in Boston. Which is a SPORTS CITY. So, while I'm diehard with baseball in general and the Red Sox in particular, I keep an eye on the Pats, the Bruins, and the Celtics. And - bandwagoner if ever - I tend to keep a little closer eye on those teams if and when they're in the playoffs. And if and when they're in the SPORTS CITY news. 

As the Celtics were earlier this fall when their coach Ime Udoka was suspended for the year of having "engaged in an improper relationship with a subordinate team employee." 

This was all pretty much front page news in these parts. It's just how we roll and, since we don't tend to have much by way of closely contested political contests, there tends to be plenty of room for stories like this on the front page.

With the season upon us - and now in early swing - the big question was who was going to replace Udoka as the Celts' head coach. 

The Celtics chose Udoka's assistant, Joe Mazzulla to step in and run the show. 

Even after he was named acting head coach, I knew nothing except the vaguest things about him. Young guy (in his 30's). Kind of local. (He's from Rhode Island.) West Virginia something or other. (That's where he played college hoop.) Some kind of trouble down there - and not good trouble (youthful assault issue). 

Then The Boston Globe did a profile on him - front page news on my online subscription.) And it turns out, Joe Mazzulla's story is really good one. 

Mazzulla grew up in Johnston, RI, and played his high school ball at Bishop Hendricken, where he excelled in basketball. (When he had time between classes, he'd duck into the gym - in his Catholic boys school uni of jacket and tie and leather shoes - and shoot baskets.) Excelling enough to win himself a scholarship to a Division One basketball school, West Virginia.

It was while he was in college that he got in trouble. Injured an out for most of the season, he was apparently moping around a bar and ended up with a domestic battery charge. Counseling, community service, dealing with his demons. Mazzulla redeemed himself and the next year, his team made it to the March Madness Final Four.

Mazzulla wasn't NBA material, but could have forged a career playing pro overseas. Along the way, however, he figured out that he was more interested in and better at helping develop players, rather than being one himself.

This led to a college coaching career at a couple of West Virginia's Division Two schools.

His first job was as an unpaid assistant at Glenville State. A couple of years later, he found a paid position at Fairmont State.

This was all pretty unglamorous. After games, he picked trash up off the gym floor. He washed the team's clothing. Cooked spaghetti for the kids. At Fairmont, he used some of his puny salary to help build a weight room for his team.

But he was a dogged worker, a student of the game, and, just as he had excelled at basketball in high school and college, he excelled at studying game books, coming up with novel game plans, and boning up on obscure rules - anything to give his team an edge. 

Mazzulla was also considered a players' coach. His team members loved him. Knowing first hand that most players don't go on to lucrative professional careers - especially if they played for obscure D-2 teams - he paid attention to making sure his athletes were more than just athletes.

Mazzulla's step in to the pros was joining the staff of the Maine Red Claws (now the Maine Celtics) in the NBA's G-League, which is a developmental league. There, he was paid a princely $15K. Plus a hotel room. 

In Maine, Mazzulla was able to show his stuff, and after a few years, he was in the mix for a job coaching in the real pros. 

He became the assistant coach of the Boston Celtics, and when Udoka was suspended, the Celts tapped Mazzulla for the head coaching job. They didn't even bother to mount a search for the position, which tells us plenty about the faith they had in Joe Mazzulla. (Also likely says something about this not looking like such a plum job to a team outsider, given that it's conceivable the Udoka could come back next year.) 

I'm not doing Joe Mazzulla any justice here, but from reading the article, he just sounds like a great guy who's overcome plenty in his still young life - if anything, growing up half Italian and half Black in Johnston, RI can't have been all that easy - and who, at 34, has already accomplished an awful lot.

This is such a feel good story. 

The Celtic made it to the NBA finals last spring, but didn't manage to grab the brass ring. 

Wait until this year. Or next year. Or whatever the 2022-2023 season is called.

Anyway, the Celts have been doing okay so far this season, and here's hoping they have an even better season than they did last year.

Joe Mazzulla kinda makes me want to watch basketball again.