The Will to Be Forgotten

Joe Mazzulla is a strange bird. 

We in the coaching and basketball worlds know the Boston Celtics Head Coach’s abundant viral clips from his press conferences. He had the players decide the starting lineups and tactical strategies for at least one game. He called the Coach of the Year Award “stupid” before winning it a few months later. He proposed allowing fighting in NBA games, as hockey does, among other rule change suggestions.

I identify as strange, too, but it’s not the strangeness per se that attracts me to what he says and does. It’s the model of freedom he exhibits. 

Today I was listening to him on a podcast, and he was asked, What is the thing you’ve been willing to do, that maybe others haven’t... 

He said, “I think you have to be willing to be forgotten. That’s my main goal. I want to be forgotten about. Because that means after you, it was better. And I think that’s what it means to be a Celtic. However long you play, coach, work for the Celtics, your job is to keep it exactly where it’s at, or bring it better. You cannot bring it down. If you leave, and it gets worse, that’s your fault. If you leave, and they win, and they forgot about you, you did your job. I talk about that everyday with the staff. Our job is to one day be forgotten about, because you did your job, and it became about something bigger than you. And I think that’s a burden, and a love, for being with the Celtics, but it’s a responsibility. And I think we can take that into our daily life as like, can I leave it so much better that they don’t remember me because the next person came in was better.”

What does that mean. When I heard it, I thought about death. I thought about fame. I thought about accomplishments. All of them figments of my imagination. To be willing to be forgotten also reminds me of being willing to never be known in the first place. Are we okay with doing what we know is right, even if no one else recognizes it? Are we okay if our life is finite, and our legacy here quickly evaporates, forever? What if you were never recognized for your work, with neither adoration or monetary rewards, would you still have the same goals, or would you approach them differently?

Mazzulla’s posture in relation to such questions resembles to me a rare dance between confidence and humility… Something like, at once, I am all that I am, and yet I am also nothing. 

It seems free. 

Zach Moo Young (Coach Moo)

📍 Washington, DC

P.S. As an MBA graduate, I can’t say I’ve ever recommended reading a business school case study, until I read this one today on Joe Mazzulla.