Sizing Up the Boston Celtics: What About Teamwork?

Individual stats gets you the big payday. If your numbers are great on a terrible team, you'll get big money—guaranteed.

Look at team payrolls. Look at our own Celtics' salaries. The stars eat up the dollars, huge dollars, whether the team does well or not.

Crumbs are left for the role players, even on good teams. Is it a proper valuation of worth? Is the wrong message being reinforced by paying for individual success and not team success?  

This Celtics' three stars/celebrities can do what is necessary to be a successful team. Will they?

Sport has become big business over the years. Not surprisingly, big business has often resorted to sport metaphors to motivate employees. Both fields are populated by groups competing against other groups.

In the big picture, they have a lot in common.

The book quoted at the top was by business author Patrick Lencioni, and is called The Five Dysfunctions of a Team.

One particularly important passage reads as follows:

“A friend of mine, the founder of a company that grew to a billion dollars in annual revenue, best expressed the power of teamwork when he once told me, 'If you could get all the people in an organization rowing in the same direction, you could dominate any industry, in any market, against any competition, at any time.'”

That's not groundbreaking wisdom. People will nod their heads in agreement when they hear it. And yet cooperation is so elusive, even making it rare.

The reason? 

“Teams, because they are made up of imperfect human beings, are inherently dysfunctional.”

Here are Lencioni’s five sources of team dysfunction:

1) Absence of Trust

2) Fear of Conflict

3) Lack of Commitment

4) Avoidance of Accountability

5) Inattention to Results

Business gobbledygook? Or relevant concepts? I started to wonder if they could apply to the Celtics.

It’s not hard to see the potential problems.

1) Trust

Are Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen, and Paul Pierce going to trust their mates enough to make this a real team? Are they really going to trust each other?

Neither Kendrick Perkins nor Rajon Rondo can shoot very well. Will every game be a 5-on-3 matchup?

2) Fear of Conflict

Rondo is supposed to be the team’s on-court leader as the PG. Will he be willing to do that with three veteran stars on the court? Will the three stars excuse each other’s faults for harmony's sake? What happens if the team gets off to a tougher start than anyone expected?

3) Lack of Commitment

No one doubts each player’s individual commitment—but will they all be committed to a game plan that might not fully utilize their strengths?

What if Doc asks Garnett to concentrate on interior defense...at the expense of his offense?

What if he asks Pierce to take many less shots and make many more passes? 

What if he asks Ray Allen, an All-Star, to come off the bench?

4) Avoidance of Accountability

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