At this point, Elmo has more patience with Rocco than Celtics fans have with their team. Hell, at this point, I might trust Rocco more in the fourth quarter.
Really, what the Celtics are truly missing, as was once again evident down the stretch of another brutal loss, is the willingness to turn games into rock fights.
Forget, for a minute, the missed shots and questionable personnel. What truly killed the Celtics against the New York Knicks is the same thing that kills them during every loss like this: the inability to make the tough plays, especially when they matter most.
“They play bullyball out there, they bullied us,” Robert Williams admitted after the game. “The long rebounds, the 50-50 balls, that's something we have to take pride in.”
The Celtics love to talk about what they need to do, but let’s be honest. This is something guys either have or they don’t. Marcus Smart has it, but there's only so much he can do, and it’s obvious his mentality isn’t contagious.
There are no other fighters on this team. That's not to say they don’t work hard, because they do. They work their butts off in practice. They watch film and learn from it. They are in the weight room. They're not afraid of putting forth the effort.
But they're not scrappers. This team doesn’t have the collective “you might beat us, but you’re going to have to take it from us” mentality. If they did, they’d have stopped this insanity by this point.
“Either we're going to make some adjustments and get tired of it or it's going to keep happening,” Ime Udoka said after the game. “It was everything leading up to it. And we need some leadership. Somebody that can calm us down and not get rattled when everything starts to go a little south. I think it snowballs between our guys."
There is one defining quality in the kind of leader Udoka is talking about. Larry Bird had it. Michael Jordan had it. Even Jayson Tatum’s hero Kobe Bryant had it. But it doesn’t exist in anyone on this team right now.
They were all assholes on the court.
I hate to say it that way, but it’s true.
There is a primitive nature to sports. Team dynamics are tribal at their core. There are leaders and followers, everyone has a role, and there is fierce loyalty to the structure and the code of the society. The leader leads, the followers follow, and if everyone does their job right, everyone eats well, sleeps comfortably, and stays safe.
When that dynamic isn’t there, the tribe is vulnerable, and the same is true in sports.
Why did the Phoenix Suns suddenly get so good? It’s because Chris Paul is the Point God, and it’s also because he’s a bit of a jerk about getting guys to do what they need to do. You might not like him for it, and he might cross a line here and there, but he got that team to snap into focus and become one of the best teams in the NBA.
Why do you think Draymond Green is so valuable to the Golden State Warriors? That man is a capital-A asshole on the court but he makes that entire engine hum over there in San Francisco. It’s not mean-spirited, but when someone makes a silly mistake on the floor, you know Green will be in that person’s ear letting him know about it.
Marcus Smart has that attitude but he doesn’t have the role in Boston. Maybe if he became the actual full-time point guard and he asserted himself in a Draymond-esque nature, he could slip into that leadership void and be what Boston needs, but everyone else would have to fall in line with that and I’m not sure that's going to work.
Tatum or Jaylen Brown can try to tap into that, but that's going to require some serious soul-searching and, frankly, a bit of Jason Bourne-level reprogramming to pull that out of them.
If neither of them can find it within them to take that kind of lead, then there are two options left: Ime Udoka, or the player to be named later.
Since I don’t know who the Celtics can bring in to accomplish this goal, that means it’s up to Udoka.
This can go one of two ways: Either Udoka finds some untapped asshole potential in one of his two stars, or he goes full Gregg Popovich and becomes one himself.
That's a tough sell in today’s NBA. Today’s players have more power than ever. Owners have hundreds of millions of dollars tied up in their players and there's a fear that pushing too hard will push players right out the door.
But somehow, someone has to do it.
This is a team full of hard-working, great guys, with the best of intentions. Most of these guys are “date my daughter”-worthy people, which is great. These are human beings we can all genuinely be happy to have representing the city.
But on the court, there's an inner dog that doesn’t quite exist. They lack a primal quality that is necessary in the very crude, emotional forum of professional sports.
It’s a land where supreme talent isn’t quite enough. It’s a place where a ridiculous mental edge separates ability from achievement. It’s a place where a leader is willing to piss anyone off, even a coach or teammate, if it means shaking a team loose from whatever malaise they're in.
The Celtics just don’t have it, and they won’t get to where they need to be until they find it.
