When the Pistons beat the Lakers to win the championship in 2004, it was a classic case of a team on the rise against a team that had had its day. For Piston fans, sadly, that same sentiment has come back to bite their team. As Chauncey Billups, Antonio McDyess and others either said or implied after losing their sixth consecutive trip to the Eastern Conference finals, the Celtics were more focused and wanted it more.
In his great motivational book, “The Winner Within,” Pat Riley often refers to that dynamic. He calls it “the innocent rise,” and I see it all the time. When athletes who have long achieved individual greatness are now involved in a team situation that shows the promise of group success, it becomes drunk with the mission of winning a championship, the most elevated of all athletic goals. The Celtics are on that mission right now.
When Joe Dumars met the media on Tuesday to announce the firing of Flip Saunders and to reflect and look ahead, he made it clear that as he walked out of The Palace after Game Six, he knew that things would be different from this moment forward.
“Everybody is in play,” he said. “There are no sacred cows. You lose that status when you lose three straight years.” The Pistons had blown a 10-point lead the last 10 minutes of Game Six. “It was a microcosm of the last three years,” Joe said, matter of factly. “We’re good enough, we’re right there, we didn’t get it done. As I walked out of The Palace that night I had a real sense of calm that I’ve seen enough, I’ve seen enough.”
From my vantage point, it followed the Riley theme that I see so often in sports. So I asked Joe this exact question. “In 2004 you guys said, ‘Wow we can really become something great.’ It seemed the same with the Celtics this year and maybe with some of the others that knocked you off in recent years. Does the team need a new sense of mission and excitement to become something great? To think that ‘we’re remade, remixed and can be great?’”
“I guess the best way I can answer that question, Eli,” Joe replied, “is I just think this team became way too content and did not show up with a sense of urgency to get it done. I can’t sugar coat it and I can’t try to make it pretty. I told Rip and Tayshuan, ‘Listen, as I was watching the final four teams play: us, Boston, LA and San Antonio, those other three teams were playing harder than we were.’
“I was watching the Lakers and San Antonio, and they’re going at it. I just saw way too much contentment from us. The most disappointing game for me in the whole series - you get Game Two and come home and lose Game Three. You can spin it any way you want. You can tell me they (Boston) shot great, but you didn’t show a sense of urgency. It is what you saw, it’s what I saw. So I said, OK, that’s enough. I’ve seen enough of this.”
I don’t believe that the Pistons ever intentionally played less than 100% -- not in Game Three or the last 10 minutes of Game Six. But they faced another team that wanted what they’ve already had, and simply wanted to grab it this time more than the Pistons did. It’s an intangible and is part of human nature. That’s why Joe’s mission is clear: Make enough sensible changes to improve a team that’s still one of the four best in basketball while also creating a new sense of mission within the ranks.
*********************
all we can rely now is to start with a potential finals coach not a coward coach like flip, we need to improve our team's performance next year, we should not attemp to trade everybody from the starting lineup, we got a solid team only thing is missing there is the coach and a center, sheed and dyess can't play center so we should start up getting better centers in the nba. ill start for Elton Brand, we can also mention ben wallace. he is still a piston heart he just got himself hacked by the taxes.
in the draft pick i think we should get a center, we should improve our bench just like we did this year.
we can go back where we have established a dynasty and that is going back to the finals this coming years.
No comments:
Post a Comment