Pride, Stubbornness, Trust, and Love

These are the components of what the Celtics call 'Ubuntu.' To me, that term encompasses all of the extra spirit and effort that a team and its players can bring to bear. It's that thing that cannot be purchased with money. Yes, these guys get paid millions to play the game, and you would THINK that would be enough to get their best effort. But it's not.

Every human has an extra gear.... that Extra Something that they can bring to a given situation -- if, and ONLY if, he or she is sufficiently motivated. If the extra motivation is missing, you will get a person's "best" if you pay them for it.... but not his Extra stuff.

It's the same dynamic as soldiers in battle who give up their bodies for their comrades. You can't buy that kind of sacrifice with money. It happens only when a group becomes a TEAM, a team whose members CARE DEEPLY.... not about themselves, but about the team, and their buddies on it.

It's some mixture of pride, stubbornness, trust in each other, and on some level, love for one another -- that makes it happen.

So maybe Danny inadvertently killed some critical part of the Cs' Ubuntu with the trade. It now seems that way. More for Rondo than the others (because he's the youngest, and was closest to Perk), but perhaps for everyone, on some level. My guess is that the two most vulnerable elements were trust and love.

I can't blame Danny (or Doc), because this kind of result seems impossible to predict in advance. The trade made sense on paper. But this team's championship hopes have always rested on that (literally) priceless thing it calls "Ubuntu," and that thing might have taken a mortal blow from the trade. That's how it looks now.

But we don't know this for sure yet. They might yet pull it together in time. But if Ubuntu did take a mortal blow -- and we will soon get the answer to that question, one way or the other -- then it's a true tragedy. (Well, in a sports sense, anyway.) A mighty team felled by the loss of a vital emotion that held them together over three hard years, after one of their brothers got sent away.

It's sad. For us, yes. And on the team, I feel it for Rajon and Kevin, the most.

But I still hold the hope that a turnaround will come. Anything is still possible.