Five things to learn from Celtics' title

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You might not be able to dunk like Kevin Garnett, or shoot like Ray Allen, or take the ball to the basket like Paul Pierce, but that doesn't mean we can't learn some lessons from the NBA champion Boston Celtics. -- TRUST When Garnett and Allen joined Pierce, they realized they were going to have to subordinate their own interests. They soon realized they were going to have to trust each other, too. That was no small thing All of them had been the stars of their respective teams, the ones that always take the big shot, the ones that had the offense go through them. Now there were three, and simple arithmetic said it was more complicated. So first they had to learn to trust each other. Then they had to learn to trust their teammates, too. That was more difficult. Almost by definition, the NBA is a star's league, everyone else revolving around them. Garnett, Pierce and Allen had to learn to trust the other players, Rajon Rondo and Kendrick Perkins, and the rest of the team. It's not always an easy thing to do. But it's at the core of what being a team is all about, the core of what being any group is about. "People talked about the Big Three all the time," Allen said. "But it wasn't about the Big Three. It was about the Big 15." Ultimately, that was the key. It's also the key to any good organization, from a team, to a family, to a business. The ability to not only empower the people around you, but to trust them as well.-- NO EXCUSES From the beginning that had been one of Doc Rivers pet expressions. He finally had Garnett and Allen to go along with Pierce, finally had the talent upgrade he had wanted. It was time to win. No excuses. We now live in the age of excuses, don't we? Excuses why we can't do this. Excuses why we can't do that. It's always someone else's fault. The teacher's no good. The coach is a jerk. No one understands. The endless litany of blaming someone else for our own failures. This is what Rivers persuaded his Big Three not to buy into, the easy cop-out, the looking for reasons not to be successful. He was telling them that if they didn't win the reasons were going to be seen as irrelevant, whether accurate or not. In other words? No excuses. -- POTENTIAL FOR CHANGE Is there anyone harder to change than an NBA superstar? But that was what Rivers had to persuade Garnett, Allen and Pierce to do. Had to convince them that in order to get where they said they wanted to be, they all would have to change, and we all know how hard it is to get anyone to change, never mind people at the height of their profession, the princes of their sport. "I think we got them at the right time," Rivers said. And his message to them was simple: They had everything that money could buy, except the trophy that validates an NBA star. This was the asterisk that hovered over all their careers, the fact they had never won an NBA title. This was the carrot that was dangled in front of them, the motivation that made them accept the fact they had to work harder defensively, and had to sell this new attitude both to themselves and their new teammates every day. To their everlasting credit, they changed. Changed their attitudes. Changed their behaviors. And the reward? They all achieved what they never had before.-- MENTAL TOUGHNESS It's the most important toughness. Not physical toughness. Mental toughness. It's another one of the mantras Rivers kept preaching to his team, the fact they were tougher than the Lakers. The fact they had both the will and the intensity to overcome whatever was thrown at them whether it was winning two game sevens, or winning two games in Detroit, or a game in Los Angeles. This is what successful teams tend to have. It's also what successful people tend to have. We get infatuated with health-club muscles, impressed with show. We as a society pay tribute to physical toughness. But it's mental toughness that's far more critical to success in life.-- TRADITION We live in an age where too few know any history, a 24-hour news cycle in which everything quickly becomes as obsolete as flash cards. Tradition? That lasts about as long as the shelf life of a pop song, right?. But there was Garnett, saying how he knew things were different when he walked into the building and saw all the banners hanging from the rafters, walked into the locker room and saw the old pictures. How he knew then that he wasn't in Minnesota anymore. "You're aware that it's something different," Garnett said. "And that it's special." Did that change Garnett's adjustment to the Celtics? Who knows? But it made him aware that he was a part of something that transcended both himself, and this particular team. It made him aware that he was a part of something greater than himself, part of something that had existed long before he arrived here, and will still exist long after he's gone. That's a great lesson for anyone to understand.(Contact Bill Reynolds at breynold@projo.com.)(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)