Celtics’ patience in the Jays paid off, can be a lesson for others

Celtics’ patience in the Jays paid off, can be a lesson for others originally appeared on NBC Sports Boston

Patience is often hard to come by in professional sports.

Everyone — from the owners to the general managers to the players to the fans — wants to win and do it right now. The potential of tomorrow is just that — potential. And when something doesn’t work out after two, three or four tries, it’s easy to make major changes and completely change course.

Taking the long view is often the best approach, whether you work in the stock market or are crafting the roster of an NBA team.

The Boston Celtics displayed extraordinary patience with Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown — the two cornerstones of their franchise. This patience was rewarded Monday night when Tatum and Brown led the Celtics to their 18th championship and first in 16 years.

“We’ve been through a lot,” Brown told reporters in his press conference after the Celtics’ title-clinching Game 5 win. “We’ve been playing together for seven years now. We’ve been through a lot, the losses, the expectations. The media have said all different types of things: We can’t play together, we are never going to win.

“We heard it all. But we just blocked it out, and we just kept going. I trusted him. He trusted me. And we did it together. To get to this point and share that experience with JT is just awesome, you know what I mean? It’s amazing, and it feels great.”

Brown won Finals MVP with an excellent two-way performance in the Celtics’ series win over the Dallas Mavericks. Tatum became the sixth player since 1980 to lead his team in points, rebounds and assists during the playoffs en route to a championship.

The journey to this triumphant moment was not easy and took a long time. In fact, the 107 playoff games Tatum and Brown had played together before Game 5 of the Finals were the most ever for a duo before finally winning the Larry O’Brien Trophy. It’s fair to wonder if that record will ever be broken, mostly because it’s rare that teams show so much patience in a duo after it comes up short three, four or five times.

The Celtics got close to the Finals in Tatum and…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/celtics-patience-tatum-brown-paid-184640121.html

Author : NBC Sports Boston

Publish date : 2024-06-19 19:08:33

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