Great column by Steve Bulpett

["Berry, Mark S" <berrym@BATTELLE.ORG>]

Everyone should read this. I'd add to his points: Players are bred these
days to think about themselves. "Show what you can do. Get on the best AAU
teams. Show the college recruiters. Show the NBA scouts." They aren't bred
to want to win. They are basketball mercenaries who drift from team to team
chasing the NBA dollar. Winning or losing is secondary. You can't change
that attitude at the pro level. Anyway, here's the link and the column:

http://www.bostonherald.com/sport/basketball/bully12152000.htm


There is but one reason why you and I and anyone over the age of 25 is
disgusted with the Celtics' failure to play with any dignity in Wednesday's
loss to the Bulls. We just don't understand. 
The sporting world has changed and, fools that we are, we cling to the
notion that those engaged in athletic combat will, you know, fight back. How
can we be so naive? Hell, it was back in 1991 that Bob Cousy shook his head
on a May flight home from a Celtics loss in Detroit and said, ``At least you
used to be able to count on complete effort in the playoffs.'' 
Nowadays you count on nothing. The game has changed because the people in
the uniforms have changed, and unless the next Michael and Magic and Larry
walk through that NBA door, it will never again be as it was. And society
has changed. The first move now upon screwing up is not to correct the
mistake; it's to figure out who can be blamed. 
In a basketball sense, the root of the problem can be found on the route
today's players have taken to get here. They simply have a different
mentality than their forefathers, and it is a process that gets truly
insidious in their formative years. It starts in the summer, where those
identified as the heads of their class play the game indoors. Sinful, I say.
Maybe you go inside for a few games and do the organized thing on occasion,
but the best players in the game's history are products of outdoor courts,
both city and rural. 
This issue has been killing me for years now, and honestly I've yet to find
a Basketball Person who disagrees. What is missing most from the NBA - and
you can make similar cases on other sports - is not skill. Fundamentals have
most assuredly slipped, but the greater loss to the game has been
competitiveness. 
It's a quality that is bred in 90-degree heat on courts that are more than
happy to have your elbows for lunch. Basketball is not getting in a run in
an air-conditioned gym before AAU types (Leo Papile hereby excluded; he
cares that his kids learn the game right) and hangers-on who are seeking to
hitch their career wagon to some 15-year-old talent. Basketball is finding
the court where the competition is and burning to get your chance. Once out
there, you do everything in your mortal power to win, because you know that
a loss means you sit for who knows how long. On the summertime courts,
defeat is death. 
It was on an early car trip to New York with friends that a kid from
suburban Boston learned that one does not drive to the basket for game
point. Out on the courts, you win with a jumper or you bleed internally. 
But here in the NBA, supposedly the best the sport has to offer, players do
not even fight back for millions of dollars. The ``keep the court''
mentality is largely gone, and the league has suffered badly for its loss. 
``To a man, the NBA isn't a place anymore where guys fight back hard,''
Randy Brown, veteran of three Bulls' championships and the outdoor courts in
Chicago, said yesterday. ``We're more finesse. You've got a lot of guys
looking at stats. The NBA is very much changed.'' 
It has changed to the point where players don't even stand up for
themselves. Someone dunks on them and they look away. I don't get it.
Perhaps it's the money and the grand security it brings that kills the
hunger. Perhaps it's more personal. But those who choose to look at what
happened to the Celtics Wednesday as a ``players vs. Rick Pitino'' thing are
missing the more basic point. This was the ``players vs. their own
character.'' When someone gives you a basketball slap in the face and you do
nothing, that is about you. It ain't about the coach. 
``You cannot coach balls,'' said Brown. ``That is uncoachable. The only
thing you can do is tell a guy what he should be doing out there. Then it's
up to the player.'' 
And if that player has any real pride, then he does not allow people to walk
all over him with layups and rebounds. When Antoine Walker was presented
with the hypothetical of putting someone on the ground in that situation, he
laughed a bit and said, ``Fines are too high for that now. Nobody wants to
pay no fines. I ain't doing it. The fines are too high nowadays.'' 
So is the price of losing. Walker may have been joking a bit, but all he has
to do is talk to one of his better friends in this area. Maybe M.L. Carr
will tell him about the Celtics playing a more talented team in the 1984
Finals and how the Lakers suddenly broke into paralyzingly conscious thought
when the Celts got physical. Maybe fellow Chicagoan Isiah Thomas can tell
him about the Pistons and their ``no layups'' policy for opponents. 
But outside of a few games among the elite teams - when the planets are
aligned just so - we have lost the drama that comes from true athletic
struggle. The players? They've just lost a little dignity.