Every morning, we compile the links of the day and dump them here… highlighting the big story line. Because there’s nothing quite as satisfying as a good morning dump.
“It starts with my relationship with Brad, us being on the same page,” Irving said. “He takes responsibility for our losses and wins. I take responsibility for losses and wins and we share it with everyone else because we all have a great hand in making this work.”
…
“This is all about being together,” Stevens said. “We have not competed with the right connected level for a while, but we can do it. And we have done it. That’s gonna have to be a choice. Ultimately, that’s on all of us; we’re all responsible for that.”
So the Celtics are facing the Golden State Warriors tonight, a team that, earlier this year, seemed to have finally caught the championship hangover–but which has been playing exceptionally well lately. Unlike the team from Causeway Street, which somehow managed to catch a championship hangover without, you know, actually winning a championship.
If the team comes out and competes and wins, well, those of us on the sidelines who write about them will make hay out of that. “Backs against the wall, the Celtics finally came together and fought like a team….”
Conversely, if the Celtics come out and stink it up (I had a dream last night that they were down 21 points in the 3rd quarter–at least I think it was the 3rd quarter), well, wash your hands of this team, they’re obviously not going to figure it out. Blow ’em up. Trade everybody. Sign Carmelo.
However, the team simply can’t make too much out of whatever happens tonight.
Awhile back, I saw an interview with Joel Hodgson. He said that during production of MST3k, they didn’t know which episodes would become fan favorites, because they were always focused on getting the next episode out:
We just don’t know when we’re making it – we’re just doing our best… I had no idea when we were making Pod People or Manos or Mitchell. We weren’t sitting there going, “Oh, this is a good one!” or “Oh, boy, when they see Mitchell, boy oh boy!” It was more like, “We have to do another [episode], let’s get to work on the next one.”
This is, albeit in a different milieu, nothing more than Brad Stevens’ repeated comments about the importance of following the right processes.
Coming out of the gate all fired up and ready to play against Golden State because It’s A Very Important Game is not part of a winning process. Taking each game seriously, and remembering that there’s always another game coming up–that’s how you perform consistently at a high level.
Stevens has been preaching it for years: You can’t get too high off the wins and you can’t get too low off the losses because there’s always another game coming along.
Obviously there have been issues getting players bought into the processes required to win consistently this year, and as I’ve had occasion to mention before, I really really think the team needs an ex-NBA player on the coaching staff–someone with years in the league and the authority to tell these 20-somethings that they’d best show up every dang day if they want to last at this level and leave behind a body of work worth remembering.
But, again, if the team is going to get things turned around, the last thing they need to do is attach too much importance to what happens tonight. If they win, great, fantastic, but there’s another game tomorrow. If they lose, well, there’s another game tomorrow, so suck it up, buttercup.
The rest of the links:
NBC Sports: Kyrie: ‘Media has just gotten outrageous’ |
Boston Herald: Celtics notebook: Road beckons for slumping Green
Add The Sports Daily to your Google News Feed!
