Chapter 306: Stop being so obsessed with victory

The NBA regular season is still in full swing. After the teams have experienced the ups and downs, break-in, injuries, and adjustments in the first half of the season, their tactics, lineups, and style of play are basically finalized, and the goals of the season are gradually clear.
Those who stayed away from the playoffs began to concentrate on training newcomers, and did not hesitate to play bad to get a good pick next season. Those who can enter the playoffs are hard-working, using the second half of the season to polish the lineup and strive to go further in the fierce playoff competition.
In comparison, the Boston Celtics look a bit different. They hold the league's top spot, but they feel more and more comfortable in the game.
Since completing a shocking 23-game winning streak, the Celtics have never won more than 8 consecutive games in subsequent games. They will always win the next wave of victories as a matter of course, and then in a certain game. Lost the match in the foreign duel; then they will continue to win, another wave of winning streaks, but they come to an abrupt end at some point, without warning.
During the 23-game winning streak, there have been constant predictions that the Celtics may become the second team to reach 70 wins after the Chicago Bulls in 1996. Indeed, no team in the entire league seems to have a Celtics battle. Power. However, as the number of Celtics' failures continues to increase, such a voice is getting smaller and smaller, until February 14, in the fifth game of the terrible Western Conference, Sacramento, the Celtics lost 111:119. Given to the increasingly perfect King, suffered the 13th defeat of the season, the debate about whether the Celtics can complete 70 wins has come to an end.
But after losing the game, people did not see much loss in the eyes of the Celtics players. Their head coach Fox Leon even said in the post-match press conference, "This is a possible The failure of acceptance, it has taught us a lot, something that has nothing to do with the result."
This kind of Leon is different from what people think. In the past, he was so in pursuit of victory, thinking that no matter what kind of game, as long as there is a result, he must go all out to win.
"Since there is always someone who wants to win the game, why is it not me that wins." This is a sentence that Leon used to talk about.
In the past, he used the media to portray the Boston Celtics into a dark legion that won, unscrupulously, and resisted the whole world. Now he is a traditional team that "enjoy the game and learn from failure"? All this makes people feel a little caught off guard, but in fact this is not without reason.
The reason for the matter started with a training conflict within the Celtics at the end of January.
The Boston Celtics' team training has always been known for its high training intensity, especially Fox Leon's off-ball simulation training, which is a huge test of the players' physical strength, will, brain power, and detail control ability. They want their brains and bodies to keep up with Fox-Leon's terrible brain like a computer. For this, they have to devote themselves 100%, so some friction is inevitable.
In a high-intensity confrontation, the Celtics rookie Daniels, because he could not stand the trash talk from Kevin Garnett during training, he angrily threw the basketball at Garnett. Head.
As the highest paid boss in the team, it is totally unacceptable to be smashed in the head by a rookie. Garnett froze and punched Daniels after a moment of stunned. Fortunately, after PJ-Brown and Paul Pierce stopped, it did not make the two more serious conflicts. After Leon's scolding, the two talents died down.
But of course this kind of thing will not end like this. Danny Angie quickly got the news, because the training is not open to the outside world, so the media has not got the news yet. But Angie knew that in the United States, there were no unpredictable shadows that journalists could not catch, and the well-informed media would soon get news.
At that time, Angie happened to have a trade plan. He thought it was enough for the Celtics to have Posey, Dior and Pierce at the forward position. He no longer needed a small role like Daniels, so he wanted to pack Daniels. The draft pick in exchange for the Nets guard Marcus Banks, he thinks the Celtics still need to make some additions on the guard line.
However, this trade was immediately strongly opposed by Leon. He believed that it would be dangerous to make any lineup adjustments and changes when the team is in good condition. And because of a conflict between players, the newcomer was dealt with, which embarrassed the Celtics and discredited Kevin Garnett.
Because of this incident, Leon and Angie's relationship became tense again, and a series of subsequent events proved that Angie's worries were not unreasonable.
The news of Kevin Garnett's rookie boxing in training was quickly exposed, accompanied by a series of reports about Garnett "bullying the rookie" in the team. Small things like letting newcomers carry bags are no longer worth mentioning, and when he went to Minnesota to play, Garnett asked a rookie to buy himself a headset for listening to music during the snowy days. There are already several pairs of headphones in the special travel bag.
This kind of news once again made the Celtics who had been hacked so much that they couldn’t be hacked in the past, even the Celtics bosses were under a lot of pressure, which even made Kevin Garnett’s All-Star vote shaken. He has been rising steadily before, ranking first among all stars.
Maybe Danny Angie’s method of trading Daniels is not a good way, but at least it can make Garnett less heartfelt. After all, they can’t send Garnett away, so they have to send away and Garnett can’t see each other. Pleasing to the eye-this is the usual practice of all teams with superstars.
But Fox Leon didn’t want this. Two days after the negative news happened, Leon held an all-hands meeting within the team. During the meeting Leon asked everyone to speak freely on a note and say their views on the team. And expectations of yourself. Then he read these anonymous notes in front of everyone, and used this relatively secret way to help the players have a spiritual exchange.
After that, Leon began to change his strategy of arranging troops in the game. He no longer played the research videos that he had lost, and made targeted combat plans before playing against each opponent. He began to truly focus on me instead of opponents. His goal began to change. It was no longer "what to do with the opponent, but what to do with us."
He gave every player the goal of the game and started to increase the players' playing time. For example, he started to really adjust Lagabe's starting position, and let Michael Reid play the sixth man, increase Alstom's playing time at the point guard position, and try to make Daniels act as an outside defensive gate. Roles and so on.
All these changes are of course full of difficulties ~EbookFREE.me~ For example, letting Reid play the sixth man makes him very unhappy. Although he has been very effective as a substitute in some games, he still hopes that he can appear. In the starting position. Until one time, after John Havlicek went to the North Shore Garden Arena to watch the Celtics game, and said in a post-match interview that Reid could inherit his own tradition, Michael didn’t have much of his new role. I complained.
In this way, the Celtics have gone through a month of small ups and downs. They no longer have the invincible dominance of the 23-game winning streak, but they have become diverse and fancy. Various routines and tactics are endless, and many professional ball critics. Everyone thinks that Fox Leon is playing with fire. I think that the Celtics at this time are a bit ecstatic, lost the root of their victory, and are obsessed with self-expression.
But Leon remained unmoved, until the All-Star Game approached, he gave the players a long vacation, asking everyone to enjoy this rare vacation. Because he knows that the so-called "wandering" during this period is for the players to truly blend together. The way to integrate players is not only victory, but also the fun of playing together. This is a more fundamental charm of basketball than winning.
Leon has begun to learn not only to care about each player's performance on the court, but also to care about each of them. When he does this, the Celtics' greatest enemy, themselves, will no longer exist. (To be continued.)