We have been playing well and BETTER.
But it still doesn't feel like this team ENJOYS playing for one another.
Even through the Dee Brown/Dominique Wilkins and then through the Walker/Pierce eras those teams actually seemed to enjoy playing together.
This team just feels like "Hey I'm talented too, I'll show you" and then they go do their own thing.
I think the issue is that all season the Celtics have had difficulty aligning players' individual goals with the goals of the team. I think they start off wanting to do the right things, play for the team, be unselfish, enjoy one anothers' successes, support every shot taken because once it's taken it's collectively their shot. But then they fall into lapses, either because they are leading by a lot or because one of them feels underutilized, where they start thinking about their individual goals (which are all reasonable goals for someone trying to build/continue a career):
- Terry is going to be an RFA and wants to maximize his earning capacity
- Gordon is trying to show that he has successfully made a comeback and is worth the $30m he was paid before his injury
- Jaylen wants to show that a) he's progressed from last year and b) that he is as good as/better than Jayson, since Jayson has stolen all the limelight since last year
- Jayson wants to show that he's an elite All-Star caliber player
- Kyrie wants to show he is a leader
- Mook wants a better contract than the $4m he is getting right now
All these goals have to be aligned with the overall team goal of winning. And since there's not enough minutes or touches for everyone there has to be sacrifice. The team of 2007-08 understood this, this was why Doc Rivers made such a big deal of UBUNTU - "I am because we are". But it was easier for those guys to all sacrifice, they had all achieved individual success.
When they get it together, and play for each other, and celebrate each others' successes and have each others' backs, it shows, when the ball moves around, and especially on defense when they communicate a lot better. They've done that more often than not in the last 30 games or so which is why we've been winning, and they tend to be very switched on when playing top caliber teams, but the occasions they lapse, especially against subpar teams, are very obvious. When they stop playing as a team and start playing as a collection of individuals, with individual goals, the first evidence is usually on the defensive side, and it's no surprise it's usually in the 3rd quarter of games where we've played well in the first half. Because you're in a winning position people start thinking about how they can achieve their own personal goals.
We should be seeing people gee each other up, try and motivate each other, cheer each other's missed shots and encourage each other to keep trying, keep working. The only person I really see doing that on the floor consistently is Marcus Smart and occasionally Kyrie. So most often the fallback is for Kyrie to get the ball and individually create a score, and tonight he wasn't there.
This is the biggest challenge facing this team. It's really on Brad and Danny to figure out, like Doc did, how to get everyone CONSISTENTLY pulling in the same direction. Because they do it in flashes, and during those flashes we look very good. But when we don't we have nights like this where we give up 28 point leads to rebuilding teams and lose and it looks really bad.
Topic: The narrative that the Celtics aren’t playing well is nonsense (Read 3971 times)