FanPost

Making the Team

You can look at making a basketball team from a number of perspectives. Fans, players, GM, coach and ownership.

Player empowerment is on the rise, as a fan of the Celtics I see this as a good thing, as a Celtics fan because Danny as a GM is in tune with it. If we go back to the Garnett trade it was as much about wooing KG to leave the Timberwolves as much as it was convincing the Twolves brass to make the move.

When Garnett achieved the possible and won a championship with the Celtics.

The business of making an NBA championship team now appeared as easy the Byrds made being a rock and roll star, and in a week or two ….

If DA could make a team by getting three HOFers together couldn’t LeBron get a couple of friends together from the class of 2003 together to win not one championship, turns out he could, would, and did.

Of course the ultimate perversion of the player empowerment movement has swung from Garnett being reluctant to consider the only franchise he ever knew, to Butler refusing to even consider playing for that same franchise while they are paying his salary (but, he did show up the rest of his teammates at practice, which is nice).

So, I shouted out who killed player loyalty? When after all it was you and me.

Everybody wants LeBron James to come to their town and play in their laundry. For some fans that is only a dream and sometimes it is reality as it was for Cavaliers, Heat, and now Lakers (although if LeBron remains productive deep into his 40’s who knows how many more unis he will wear and in ten years if Sacramento is 200 million under the cap the King may plays for the Kings).

In yearning for free agents applying fanatical calculus we put forth the proposition that we are better than they, and therefore he should join us and (not) them.

Of course we are alright with losing Isaiah Thomas for Irving (only as long as we win the trade) our loyalties come cheap a few more wins and an all-star appearance is usually all it takes.

There has been an ongoing basketball survival of the fittest that has evolved from long before the baskets had nets to the present and so it will continue on into the future. It is making the team, at some point you, me, anyone makes the team or they don’t.

Survival of the fittest.

When, I was younger, I would associate fittest with biggest or strongest or a singular characteristics, but I was clearly missing the mark until I came to understand it as most adaptable.

Is loyalty no longer a desired trait the NBA echo system? Is the intrigue of player movement more exciting than the actual games? Is that what generates the interest that turns grown men dribbling a ball into what could someday soon be a trillion dollar industry (I bet it will … did you see what I did there?). Good times for owners.

Did winning last night’s game make you happy?

But what is happiness? It’s a moment before you need more happiness. Iwon’t settle for 50% of anything. I want 100%. (Madmen).

So if player and fan loyalty is gone what has replaced it? What binds the association?

I believe the same survival of the fittest, the pressure of making the team as such a high levels as youngsters making the team. Has made today’s players very adaptable with a great deal of respect for each other.

I read that as 13 year old Jayson Tatum was rated as the 7th best basketball player in the country, it doesn’t matter who was doing the rating or if Tatum actually was the 7th or the first or the 10th or the 100th, what matters was he was plugged in to the development machine as were 100’s of other basketball players his age.

I can imagine him doing the things that thirteen year old kids do with a young Markell Fultz. He may have been to scores and camps through the years with him in a dozen different locals. They had to adapt to what coaches and peers. I can imagine that Markell’s mom has sat next to Jayson’s mom, and believe that Tatum and Fultz respect each other in ways that Sixer and Celtics fan could ever respect a player wearing the wrong colors.

They are survivors they have earned it and they have lived it.

If the games become second in importance to my fantasy team (where we get to make the team), my predictions, my wager. I can still hold onto my belief is the game itself is in good hands with those that play it and respect it, and those that came before them.

The kids are alright. Even if we aren’t, my fantasy team lost last night and I am sad, but my reality team that I have zero impact on, won but I can't think about that until they win at all. Strange days.

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