Joe Mazzulla refuses to call himself a championship head coach, because he doesn’t want his identity to be attached to outcomes “I’m not a championship head coach. I’m just a guy that won a championship with a bunch of other people. It comes back to the identity piece. You start walking around saying… Oh, I’m a championship head coach.’ There’s coaches who are better than I am who may have never even gotten to the playoffs. You can’t start looking at success because of that.” “In your wording is the most important thing. I’m just a guy that won a championship with a group of people. We did it together. My identity cannot be wrapped up in that…Or else, you’re just a failure for the rest of your life because you may only get one.” “If you coach for 20 and you go one out of 20… Did you have one successful year and 19 unsuccessful ones? What does that look like? The first test is being very specific about the story you tell yourself and the words that you use.” “Knowing that, I didn’t do anything. There’s a group of us that did this. And then it’s over. When you are fortunate enough to win… It tests your willpower. How are we going after more? After the first one, you’re kind of like in purgatory.” “You now have a sense of what it’s like… But you might not get back. It may take one year. It may take 10. You just don’t know.” “It tests… Are you in it for the right reasons? Because it may never come back around. But you still got to show up every day.”