Celtics Hold Three Hour Dinner In Houston

http://www.nba.com/celtics/news/sidebar/shoot-110114-rondo-celtics-held-three-hour-dinner-houston




Rondo: Celtics Held Three-Hour Dinner in Houston

Posted: Nov 01, 2014



By Marc D'Amico |  @Marc_DAmico
Celtics.com
November 1, 2014

HOUSTON – The Boston Celtics sat together on a plane for nearly four hours Friday afternoon. Apparently that wasn’t enough.

Rajon Rondo revealed Saturday morning that he and his teammates gathered together for an important – and lengthy – meal following their long flight to Houston, all with the goal of developing team chemistry.

“I think this is where the camaraderie comes together and you become a close team,” Rondo said of road trips. “It wasn’t an official team dinner [Friday], but we went to eat and we had a good team-bonding dinner. It took about three hours. It was a great dinner.”

It makes sense that the team chose Friday as the day for a large-scale team dinner. After all, this is the first time the group has been more than a 90-minute flight away from Boston.

The C’s are finally isolated on this five-day, two-game road trip. They want to take advantage of that fact by getting to know each other on an even deeper level.

Rondo, who said that every team’s personality is different, is starting to get a grasp on this group of Celtics. He’s learning that this team loves to have a good time, and he claims that’s a good thing.

“We have a lot of young guys, a lot of playful guys with good personalities,” Rondo said. “So it kind of helps ease everything.”

Rondo himself showed off his playful personality by poking fun at one of his teammates, 14-year veteran Gerald Wallace, as he discussed the team dinner.

“We don’t have too many stiff guys like Gerald, older guys that are set in their ways,” he joked. “Everybody’s young and can be molded, and what better way than to have dinner with food?”

No one on this team seems to be very stiff at this point, including Wallace. The Celtics are playing well on the court, and they’re getting along even better off the court. That’s a great combination to have as they prepares to tip off their first road game of the season.




bob
MY NOTE: After Bogans, having this happen is just a great, great thing to hear about. Rondo really is growing up.



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". . . and what better way than to have dinner with food?”

I guess it beats dinner without food.

gyso

Hope they didn't spend the entire three hours eating.

Maybe full tummies explained their malaise during the first quarter of the game.

Sam

As good an explanation as any. I wonder if any of the players had pancakes.

I seem to recall a story that Auerbach had a rule that none of his players were to eat pancakes the night before a game.  Red believed that pancakes made his players slow and sluggish.

One night he caught Russell, Sanders and Sam Jones in the hotel snack bar feasting on forbidden pancakes and fined them each $25.  Expensive pancakes for the early '60's.

I wonder what the final tab was? Had to be huge.