The rest is just noise

"Did I tell you the story about Bob Cousy coming to the Celtics?" At the weekly lunch meeting, Reed Auerbach always had a story to tell.

Louis' only memory of Cousy is that in the summer of 1979, after boss John Y. Brown, who had a bad relationship with Auerbach, made sarcastic comments to the former, Cousy angrily threatened to beat Brown up.

At that time, Louis felt that Cousy had a country bumpkin's recklessness.

It is a pity that, except for serving as the Celtics announcer in the early 1980s, Louis did not know what he was doing at other times, and the two sides did not have any intersection.

At this time, hearing Auerbach mention him, Louis also listened carefully.

"Before playing professionally, Bob was a superstar in New England. He played for the College of Holy Cross. The locals loved his groundbreaking style of play. The influence of college basketball in that era was much higher than that of professional basketball. All

The media was saying that I should choose him, but I suffered a big loss with George McCann. I didn't believe that Bob could change anything. To be honest, I didn't want him at all."

The situation is far more complicated than Auerbach makes it seem.

That was the first year Auerbach took over the Celtics. Due to the incompetence of his predecessor, the Celtics were a bad team at that time. Even if the red head came, they still won the No. 1 pick that year with the worst record.

Players like Cousy were a smash hit college star at the time. As long as the Celtics selected him, even if they couldn't win, the locals would buy tickets to support him.

Auerbach is a person who does not pay attention to market and business, but only to practicality. Therefore, he rejected the heartthrob Cousy and chose Bill Sharman and another unknown player.

"What's interesting is that shortly after the draft, the team that selected Bob went bankrupt." Auerbach said proudly, "In order to give a home to the players who had lost their ownership, the league held a loose draft. They have since

The three most valuable players from that team were selected by drawing lots from the three teams with the worst records last season. Bob was my third choice. Unfortunately, I had bad luck and had to

The last choice. Bob’s luck was not good either. Neither the first two teams looked down on him, a short guy who knew how to do tricks.”

Speaking of this, Auerbach smiled proudly.

It's strange to say that it was obviously Auerbach's misreading of the story, but in the end he became the big winner. "This is the story of Bob Cousy coming to Boston."

After hearing this story, Reed's brother Zane said: "More than this, I want to hear Coach Lu talk about why he can tolerate Isiah until now."

As soon as Zane finished speaking, the atmosphere of the luncheon became much more cheerful.

Because of Isiah Thomas, Louis' golden body was damaged, and his perfect resume finally had a slight flaw. So these people would make fun of it when they had nothing to do.

And it’s no wonder people like to mention it, because Thomas’s behavior inadvertently created a kind of cooperation with these middle-aged fun-lovers that Louis could never have imagined.

This kind of natural cooperation will definitely not be possible for the Celtics under Thomas. The first mistake Thomas made was that the use of Yao Yueban was inconsistent with Louis's ideas.

After the start of the new season, Yao Yueban averaged less than one three-pointer in five consecutive games.

In the sixth game, Yao Yueban was inspired by Louis, and he rebelliously took five three-pointers and hit two goals. After the game, Thomas expressed his hope that the inside attack could be deeper inside.

Forced, Louis had no choice but to interview Thomas.

The concept that he could not accept and understand made Louis use the authority of the president to enforce it. From then on, Yao Yueban took at least four three-pointers in every game.

Since he had just started practicing three-pointers, his shooting percentage was not impressive, only over 30%. Louis had no doubts about whether Yao Yueban could practice three-pointers.

Free throw shooting percentage is the data that most intuitively reflects whether a player has shooting talent. Yao Yueban's free throw shooting goes without saying.

Through his free throws, Louis can conclude that Yao Yueban was the center with the best touch before Karl-Anthony Towns.

Although he is currently averaging four three-pointers per game with a shooting percentage of just over 30%,

, but Louis has already seen the future when Yao takes eight three-pointers per game, but his three-point shooting percentage is close to or even exceeds 40%.

Soon, Thomas, who was upset because he couldn't control Yao Yueban's playing tendencies, had no time to care about it. Due to the new system and new tactics, the Celtics' way of playing completely changed.

However, Louis asked Thomas to adopt a method of combining the two systems, which was beyond Thomas' ability. He could not control the number of turnovers the team made and did not know how to adjust.

The assistant coaches are also helpless because they cannot go beyond the head coach to train the team on their own. They can only give Thomas suggestions and then let Thomas implement them.

If a genius plan is executed by a fool, the result will still be a complete failure. The Celtics started with a record of 3 wins and 7 losses.

The accusations and doubts about Thomas are getting stronger day by day.

At the end of November, the Celtics challenged the Grizzlies in an away game. When Thomas held a timeout at the last minute and watched the team miss a good game and be reversed by the opponent, the furious Bill Simmons said on ESPN

I wrote a long article in the column confidently.

The title of the article is "NBA Coaches Summit."

Whether it is the conception, the aggressiveness, or the ridicule and humiliation of Thomas himself, this article is a perfect score.

In the article, Simmons selected the ten stupidest head coaches in NBA history, including Thomas, and then asked them to describe the stupidest game they ever coached in the first person.

The ending is that the real Isiah Thomas stole their "creative ideas" and made full use of "predecessor wisdom" to make the Celtics lose in a fancy way.

This article broke Thomas' guard.

When a reporter asked Thomas what he thought of this article without fear of death, Thomas said gloomily: "I don't have any opinion. I just want Bill Simmons to be careful on the road. If he meets me, I will

Give him a bullet."

Because of this incident, Thomas's reputation plummeted, and the personal image he accumulated as a player went bankrupt. Originally, everyone only doubted his coaching ability, but now, even his character has to be questioned.

In order to let Thomas avoid the limelight, Louis announced that he would be suspended from the team for three games. Thomas had to hold a press conference to formally apologize.

Then, the most exciting thing for the media happened.

During Thomas' suspension, Laimbeer led the team to a record of 2 wins and 1 loss.

The media ignored that the three opponents the Celtics faced were all bad teams this season, and just pointed out to themselves that during Thomas' suspension, the Celtics had a winning rate of 66%.

Laimbeer, who was in charge of leading the team during this period, knew very well that he could win those two games even if Thomas was the coach. But now Thomas has lost the ability to judge things correctly.

He really felt that Laimbeer might usurp his position as head coach, and he placed stricter demands on his players. His patience with errors and mistakes disappeared, and he became irritable and irritable, abusing players who made mistakes like a devil.

This devilish coaching momentum has indeed effectively reduced the number of mistakes.

But it also makes the players lose their aggressiveness. No one wants to be scolded for a mistake.

As a result, everyone no longer runs complicated tactics or plays difficult pick-and-rolls. The rhythm of the game and running speed have dropped by several levels. For NBA teams, such offensive intensity is not a threat at all.

A more terrifying problem has occurred than the high number of mistakes.

The Celtics' offense became stagnant, like a headless fly that couldn't find its direction.

Thomas knew why players were losing their energy, so he began to screen personnel extensively to find those who could withstand high pressure, and then greatly increased their playing time.

In order to win, Thomas increased the playing time of core players such as Yao Yueban. The Celtics also had a good time for half a month, and the winning rate was once close to 60%.

Then, Yao Yueban suffered an injury. He was stepped on his toe while grabbing a rebound. Although it was not a serious injury, Louis asked for intensive care. If not

Let the players display the sportsmanship of fighting through injuries. It will take at least half a month for Yao Yueban's toe injury to heal. Louis is not in a hurry, but Thomas is anxious to death. With Yao Yueban absent, the other main core players need to bear greater responsibilities.

responsibility. As a result, more injuries occurred.

The Boston media began to countdown to Isiah Thomas' dismissal.

This is also the reason why Louis was teased at the lunch meeting. How tolerant he is to endure until now and not fire Thomas.

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