The Boston Celtics are now fighting a battle of complacency during All-Star week. Jaylen Brown recently addressed the issue, calling it a tough struggle and asserting that the team that loses focus early in the playoffs is the one that wilts.
Brown added, “It’s tough” (h/t NESN). “There is a brawl. The ability to concentrate for extended periods of time is a mindset. The hardest thing in sports, in my opinion, is to maintain total focus since, as the playoffs progress, the team whose concentration wavers the most will ultimately lose.
Brown thinks the Celtics have been successful in maintaining that concentration this season, which helps to explain why Boston leads the Minnesota Timberwolves by four games at the All-Star break.
“I believe we’ve been performing well this year,” Brown began, before adding, “This has been the best year so far for our emphasis on mentality and focus.” I am therefore feeling powerful and optimistic about our squad going into the postseason.
The Boston Celtics locker room was instilled with a culture of complacency by Kyrie Irving and Tristan Thompson.
According to John Karalis, host of the Locked On Celtics podcast, Kyrie Irving and Tristan Thompson “poisoned” Jayson Tatum’s mindset, detracting from Brown’s attention as the team’s 1/1A counterpart.Karalis began, “I keep going back to Kyrie Irving and Tristan Thompson, and I swear I feel like they poisoned Tatum’s brain.” I believe that Tatum initially discovered from Kyrie that the regular season is meaningless. Tristan Thompson has taught you that the regular season is meaningless. He simply doesn’t seem to place the same value (on the regular season), in my opinion. I genuinely think that to be true.
The Boston Celtics’ most difficult to remember with nostalgia are the years Irving (2017–2019) and Thompson (2020–21) spent there. Despite being a strong contender in Irving’s first season, the Cs’ postseason run occurred while Irving was sidelined. From an on-court standpoint, Irving and Thompson weren’t entirely bad, but introducing a championship complacency to a young locker room that hadn’t attained those levels yet was as detrimental a behavior as could have been.
