Ron Borges: Celtics Need To Be Bad To Get Better

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Celtics need to be bad -- real bad
By Ron Borges - MSNBC
Updated: 4:24 p.m. ET April 08, 2004
 
Sometimes, people say, you can't win for losing. In the case of the Boston Celtics, they can't win by winning.
	
When Danny Ainge took over as director of basketball operations of the most storied franchise in the NBA just over a year ago, he made clear what his aim was. A lottery pick.
The Celtics may have won more championships in history, but adding flags to the rafters was not yet Ainge's concern. Titles are everyone's goal, but Ainge knew they wouldn't do that any time soon, so he immediately began doing what he felt had to be done -- demolish the old team to build a new one.
The Celtics did reach the Eastern Conference finals two years ago and the playoffs last season, but few people were fooled. This team wasn't a player or two away from challenging the best of the West. In Ainge's opinion, the old team couldn't even challenge the best in the East, which says something when you consider that at the moment only four teams are above .500, and the Celtics aren't one of them.
Yet after struggling through a dismal season, the Celtics suddenly have made a stretch run Ainge never expected and would have been just as happy to have avoided. Boston has somehow won 12 of its last 18 games to create a tenuous hold on the eighth and final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference. Although winning may be the aim, this was not the plan. Not this year, at least.
The Celtics were supposed to slip into the depths of the East, but the conference is so inept they couldn't do it despite their best efforts and, some would argue, Ainge's. With only a handful of games left, they might yet yield the final playoff slot, but that is no longer the important point in Boston. If one cannot win in the playoffs, what is the point of making them?
The important point in such a circumstance is not to add talent while squeaking into the postseason by clinging to the bottom rung of the conference standings.
What is important is the odd idea that somehow they have lost no matter what, because they have lost their shot at a lottery pick, which Ainge knew his team desperately needed if they were to transform from a perennial also-ran into the kind of team they were in the '60s with Bill Russell and Bob Cousy, and the '70s with John Havlicek and Dave Cowens, and the '80s with Larry Bird, Kevin McHale and Robert Parish.
Recently, legendary ex-Celtics' coach Red Auerbach, the club's president and historical conscience, lauded the job Ainge had done in rebuilding but also hinted that while Ainge has imported some talent, like Ricky Davis, Jeri Welsch and Chucky Atkins, that does not herald the transformation required to return Boston to the competitive balance it once held with the Los Angeles Lakers, their long-time rival and repeated victim over the years.
"I like this team,'' Auerbach told the Boston Herald, "but always remember, we need a little more help. That's where it's at. The five or six guys Danny's got are good, but it's difficult to sustain it for 48 minutes.
I think they're doing pretty good, considering.''
Perhaps too good. Too good for the Celtics own good. Good enough to just make the playoffs but never good enough to join the Eastern Conference's elite, let alone compete on an even footing with the West's top teams. Not until they get worse can the Celtics get better it seems.
Much worse.
So, while the Celtics limp toward becoming a playoff team with a losing (35-43) record, are they improving or regressing? Are they winning or losing? Are they retreating from excellence by gaining the playoffs?
Not even Ainge may know for sure, but he may have his suspicions while worried fans fear that what he said when he first arrived is true -- the only way to return to what they once were is by first becoming the image of another once proud franchise that has fallen on hard times. For the Celtics to rise again, first they must become the Chicago Bulls, a team now so far removed from all those championships won by Michael Jordan that the memory of their dominance is barely visible.
To win, the Celtics first must lose. This season, playoffs or not, they did the opposite. They lost by winning just a bit too much.