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MORGANTOWN -- It caught your eye immediately; this item being tossed about on the Internet as the National Basketball Association began readying itself for its 2023 playoffs.
The item noted that Joe Mazzulla's 57 wins were the second-most for a first-year coach of the Boston Celtics.
The record-holder, just three games off, was some guy named Bill Russell.
You might have heard of him.
It was an improbable exclamation point on an improbable season in an improbable career that wound its way from Rhode Island through West Virginia University, down to Glenville State and Fairmont State, up into Maine and then to becoming first an assistant coach of the legendary Boston franchise, then the head coach on an interim basis, a position which led to the dream-come-true job of full-time head coach.
The story is ongoing, of course, with the perfect conclusion being an NBA championship and Coach of the Year honors, but it is a story told best by the man himself, one-time Mountaineer point guard.
We stumbled upon it this week much the way John Beilein stumbled upon Mazzulla at WVU, for we were researching former WVU assistant coach Billy Hahn, who had just died on Friday, coming across a Podcast he did with Mazzulla as his guest shortly after Mazzulla had been named an assistant with the Celtics.
"Funny story," Mazzulla began when asked about it by Hahn, who played a strong role in developing the point guard at WVU.
"I didn't know how recruiting worked, but I must have made his mail list back in 2005 or 2006. I get this letter from West Virginia University. It was just this formal type of letter, so I called the toll-free number on it and got the secretary and asked for coach Beilein.
"For some reason, I got him on the phone and introduced myself and he had no idea who I was. I guess it was coach [Jeff] Neubauer (a Beilein assistant who had already left for Western Kentucky), who had been recruiting me but must not have told coach Beilein about me."
That was how it started, a phone call out of nowhere to Beilein.
"Once I was on their radar, coach Beilein got into it. He was very tactical in his recruiting and on player development, how you fit into a particular system," Mazzulla went on.
"He had a plan where he saw me in that system but there were a couple of point guards ahead of me -- JD Collins and Darris Nichols."
That didn't hold Mazzulla back.
"They were successful in that system and had just come off a Sweet 16 and Elite Eight, so I thought that was perfect. I had Beilein for a year and he was great at player development and practice planning. He was good at the tactical side of the game."
Beilein, of course, left and Bob Huggins followed.
"When he left and coach Huggins came in, he spoke more my language, being more a 17-year-old kid with a chip on my shoulder from Rhode Island," Mazzulla said.
"I wasn't as offensively skilled as some of the other players coach Beilein recruited, but coach Huggins said, 'If you want to stick around here, you have to play defense and you have to play hard.' Playing hard wasn't something I did then. I had to learn how to do that."
He did and the rest of the journey at WVU took care of itself, incorporating what he learned from Beilein and what he learned from Huggins into a basketball philosophy.
"I was fortunate to play for two Hall of Fame coaches in coach Beilein and coach Huggins," Mazzulla said. "Having coach Huggins for four years, seeing how he treated his players and got the most out of them and how he made coaching a passion, not just a job. I knew that was what I wanted to do.
"I also knew my playing career wasn't going too much further than college, so I wanted to get a head start to give guys the same opportunity that I had, that being having a coach who puts in the time and cares about players both as a person and basketball player," he said.
He went to Glenville, spent a couple of years there, moved on to Fairmont State under former Huggins assistant Jerrod Calhoun for three years.
"Coach Calhoun was instrumental as a coach and person in my life at West Virginia," he said.
It's a long way from Fairmont State to the Boston Celtics and it actually began in the Final Four of 2010 for WVU.
"It's amazing how the seeds you plant and the people you meet later happen," Mazzulla said. "Ron Nored was a point guard for Butler coach Brad Stevens (who would go on to become the Celtics coach and then general manager) and we were in the same Final Four. We are kind of similar players, we're both lefty and one of us can shoot. We're both kind of hard-nosed defensive guys.
"He graduated and went to Boston with Brad. He left Brad to go to be head coach at Northern Kentucky, who had just gone from Division II to Division I. I was at Fairmont State and we were recruiting similar players, so we ran into each other a couple of times."
On one of those days, Mazzulla said the conversation went like this:
"Another funny story," Mazzulla continued. "I go up to Ronald and knowing his story, knowing he was with Brad, I said, 'Hey, you're one of the dumbest people I ever met for leaving Brad's side and leaving the NBA to come do this college stuff. I'm going in the opposite direction.'
"We laughed about it and talked about it and became very good friends. He ended up leaving Northern Kentucky to go back to the NBA as a head coach in the G-League, so he called me and said, 'Hey, I'm the Brooklyn Nets G-League head coach. I love what you are about and I want to hire you.'"
Mazzulla didn't have to hear the offer twice.
"At the time I was in my fifth year at the Division II level and I had been praying for a different opportunity. The NBA was always where I wanted to go," he said. "I didn't even ask any questions. I said, 'Great, I'm coming. I want to work for you. End of story.'
Only it wasn't the end of the story.
"The only problem was Brooklyn had hired their G-League coach before their NBA coach. A week later I'm helping some of my former Fairmont State players move out of their apartment and I'm listening to the new GM of the Brooklyn Nets, Kenny Atkinson.
"Now I loved Kenny Atkinson and I studied him and I'm really excited. But Ron calls me and says 'Hey, I don't have the control over hiring an assistant and I'm not going to be able to hire you.' Within a matter of a week, I had my dream and then I didn't have my dream. In fact, I didn't have a job at all.
"I was at home in Fairmont. My wife was working, she was in grad school and had just had a son, who was 3 months old. Ron, being the great guy he is, called Brad and called the G-League people in Maine and tells them the story, asks them to interview me.
"So, I go through the interview process and was fortunate to get on with the Maine Red Claws. The great thing about the Boston Celtics and the Maine Red Claws is there's a lot of synergy between them and they take the G-League very seriously and are very hands on.
"Brad's an incredible human being. From the second I walked in the facility he knew I worked at Fairmont State, he knew about my family. He checks on G-League players and the head coach. His head coach, Danny Ainge, was hands-on with the G-League."
So Mazzulla took the job in Maine.
"The coolest thing about it is it turned into my favorite two years in coaching (until this year). When I don't go to Brooklyn, I have to get a job, so I work as a bar back at a bar in Fairmont, from like 8 p.m. to 2 a.m. I take out the trash, clean up the bar, make sure no one does anything. That's my job for like four months.
"Then I leave my wife, my newborn, my family to plant seeds and make this investment into my career by going to Portland, Maine, for a year. It was the best year and a half. I had to be grateful. I had everything taken away from me and I had to learn how to be a coach; I had to work on my marriage, I had to learn to be a parent while away from them.
"That year made me who I am."
Now he's sitting in the same seat Red Auerbach, Bill Russell, Bill Sharman, Bill Fitch, Tommy Heinsohn, Doc Rivers, Rick Pitino, KC Jones and Dave Cowens, among others, occupied.
"Walking into the Celtics facility every day, it can become second nature to being ungrateful and taking things for granted," Mazzulla said. "I have to go in every day not taking anything for granted and being grateful to be blessed to be working with some of the best players in the world and I'm blessed to work with one of the most loving, caring front offices in the world.
"You can't take that for granted."