Remember Larry Bird? How 'bout Kevin McHale? OK, now try Robert Parish. Put those three players together and you'll get a pretty good picture of what the Boston Celtics used to be. It's called the 'Glory Days', folks - and unfortunately for Boston Celtics fans, those days are loooong gone.
With their recent loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves - which marked their 18th straight - the Celtics are in jeopardy of breaking the NBA's all-time record for consecutive losses of 24. Star Paul Pierce, who recently returned to the team from an injury, summed up the Celtics' emotion right now fairly well.
"You can feel it in the locker room, each loss definitely hurts," Pierce said. "These guys are going to keep playing hard. We just need to get it out of our head."The saddest part about this Boston team though is that they have talent. It may be wasted talent and it may be overrated, but its talent nonetheless. And in professional sports nowadays, there is little to no excuse for a team with even the tiniest amount of talent to lose 18 straight games...especially in the NBA. Blame the star player (Paul Pierce), or the coach (Doc Rivers), or whoever else you want (I picked Sebastian Telfair, only because I hated his ESPN documentary). In the end, it comes down to chemistry. This Celtics team simply doesn't have any.
Back in the day, the Celtics exemplified team chemistry. Bird was a star, yes, but was McHale? Not really. Was Parish? No, but he was tall. These guys simply worked well together, they played as a team. Hell, they even had Bill Walton at one point. Toss in guys like Danny Ainge, Dennis Johnson and Dee Brown and its still a wonder how this team played so well together throughout the 80s and into the early 90s. To put it simply, Pierce is going to have to play the hand he's been dealt and do his best impersonation of Larry Bird.
Luckily for Boston, their next game is against the Milwaukee Bucks, not exactly a perennial powerhouse in the NBA. However, if the Celtics can't pick up a win there, they'll have to pull out a miracle in one of their five...count 'em five...West Coast matchups against either the Kings, Suns, Lakers, Jazz or Rockets.
These guys just can't catch a break, can they?
