This is a story with a surprise ending.

It’s about a prominent person from here, but I’ll leave out his full name until the end.

His first name is Joe and he's 35. His is a story of redemption.

You see, Joe had enormous promise, but just as he was achieving it, he almost self-sabotaged with too much drinking. The drinking got him into two different messes where the police were involved.

That could have derailed him.

But people still believed in Joe, and, in time, it made him believe in himself and become a new person.

That person just achieved something remarkable that was top news around the whole country last week.

It was quite a triumph for a kid from Johnston.

That’s where Joe grew up, son of an Italian dad and an African American mom.

They raised him as a devout Catholic, and Joe embraces it to this day, in some ways more than ever. He recently shared a ritual that shows the depth of his faith.

Joe is in professional sports. Often, before games, he gets to the arena early to walk around alone praying the rosary. When he was asked about that, he said it was both to center himself and live an important value as a father.

“The things I want to pass on to my kids,” Joe said, “are like, you know, the faith mindset. It’s not money, but if I can give them faith, and a competitive mindset – give them the ability to go through life and handle things when they don’t go your way, that’s a legacy.”

Joe is historically young for what he just accomplished. That’s part of the surprise ending, though many readers might figure out who this is from the details I’m mentioning.

Joe went to Bishop Hendricken High School, where he became a basketball star. He helped lead the team to three state championships. His own dad had been a standout basketball player, too, a coach at Johnston High and the town’s director of Parks and Recreation.

Having guidance from a high-level sports dad certainly helped, but that’s not enough if you don’t earn it, and Joe did. Four days a week, he got to the Hendricken gym at 6 a.m. with a few teammates and worked out for 90 minutes before class.

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Joe once explained it this way: “I’m not the most talented guy, but I play with passion.”

Joe went on to play high-level college hoops, even leading his team to a Final Four appearance, but he also had some rough challenges. At one point, he injured his shoulder so badly that he needed the kind of surgery many kids don’t come back from. But after six months, he did.

Yet Joe had some other demons, too.

His dad was honest about what his son struggled with, saying Joe went through mood swings and depression.

Like a lot of people facing such things, he self-medicated, in his case with alcohol. It got him in trouble in college. In 2008, he was arrested for underage drinking and fighting with police at a major league baseball game. A year later, he was drunk in a bar and put his hands on a woman’s neck. That led to an arrest for domestic battery.

He was suspended from the college team.

But it opened his eyes to how he had lost his way. He went to recovery and has been sober ever since.

Later, when he went on to become a professional basketball coach, he owned up to that phase of his life this way:

“I've hurt people, and I have had to use the situations I put myself in as a younger man to learn from and become a better person. That's what I've been focusing on: How can I recreate my identity as a person, rely on my faith, and have a positive impact on the people around me?”

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That newfound integrity helped Joe land assistant coaching jobs at some West Virginia universities, and the same with a Boston Celtics minor league affiliate in Maine.

In 2019, Joe was named assistant coach of the Celtics.

In 2022, he was suddenly thrown into the fire, becoming the interim head coach after his predecessor was ousted for having a relationship with a subordinate.

In 2023, Joe earned enough respect to have the “interim” set aside.

And one week ago, Joe Mazzulla of Johnston, and now of the Celtics, at age 35, became the youngest head coach since 1970, and second-youngest ever, to guide an NBA team to a national championship.

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This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Joe Mazzulla's story is full of surprise endings and redemption: Patinkin