Boston Celtics' "Rejuvenation" Based in Money, Not in Team

While I was watching the ESPYs on Sunday night, my thoughts concerning the Boston Celtics ‘team’ were revived.

During the acceptance speech for the “Best Championship Team” award, Ray Allen summarized how all of the players came from different teams, and still came together during the season.

As much as I love the idea of “Ubuntu” and KG and company coming together for a two- or three-year run, I could not appreciate them.

The Celtics, with their acquisitions of Ray Allen and KG through trades and walk-ons such as James Posey (who has already left), Sam Cassell, and Eddie House, simply cannot be the emblematic idea of team.

As a longtime Timberwolves fan, I find myself constantly reflecting on the magical '03-04 season when Minnesota finally got out of the first round and made it to the Western Conference Finals, where they lost to the Lakers.

Admittedly, my hyprocrisy shines through, as Latrell Sprewell and Sam Cassell were major factors of that season. 

Any true Wolves fan will remember that series as one in which the Wolves made Gary Payton look like the Payton of old, as injuries to various point guards resulted in 12th man Darrick Martin averaging 25 minutes per game.

That Lakers team, which grouped together an aging Karl Malone and Payton with Kobe Bryant and Shaq, was a truly unlikable team.

The Detroit Pistons were thought of as a more ideal team, but they admittedly acquired Rasheed Wallace during the season.

Has the concept of the truly ideal team as one which drafts and develops the majority of its roster disappeared as quickly as the notion of a player spending his whole career with one team?

Critics would be quick to point at the Spurs, with their core of Duncan, Ginobili, and Parker—yet even they hugely benefited from Michael Finley and Robert Horry.

Sadly, in 21st-century sports, it is the Celtics—who managed their salary cap and acquired the right one or two-year mercenaries—who are in fact the perfect representation of their era.