Boston's Fight Would Make Valvano Proud

http://www.nba.com/celtics/news/sidebar/bostons-fight-would-make-valvano-proud



Boston's Fight Would Make Valvano Proud
By Marc D'Amico ●  @Marc_DAmico
Celtics.com
December 11, 2013


NEW YORK – Jim Valvano once famously said, “Don’t give up. Don’t ever give up.”

The late North Carolina State basketball coach would certainly be proud to watch the current version of the Boston Celtics.

Six weeks into the season, not giving up has been the M.O. of these Celtics. No matter how much time may be left on the clock, and no matter how many points they may trail by, there will be no quit in this Boston team.

“We want to fight until the buzzer goes off,” Avery Bradley told Celtics.com. “That’s our motto.”

That motto was on full display, yet again, Tuesday night in Brooklyn.

Boston fell behind the Nets by as many as 17 points in the second half and trailed by 10 points with 3:04 remaining in the contest. Despite that tall mountain they were faced with climbing, the Celtics never thought about quitting. Not for one second.

“We’re a fighting team,” said Bradley. “We felt like we still had a chance to win the game with two minutes left. We wanted to fight until the buzzer went off.”

And so they did. It took just 71 seconds for the Celtics to slice Brooklyn’s lead in half. Jordan Crawford began the run by putting home a driving layup, and then Brandon Bass scored three straight points to bring the score to 96-91.

Boston’s comeback bid eventually came up short, but that doesn’t change the fact that it battled until the final whistle. Again.

We say again because this isn’t a new thing for this season’s Celtics. They’ve done it over and over again since the preseason began in early October. Don’t act like you don’t remember Oct. 9, when the Celtics battled back from a 23-point, fourth-quarter deficit against the Knicks. They nearly won that game, a preseason tilt that meant nothing, because they refused to give up.

Some would tend to believe that such a mindset stems from the leadership of a team’s head coach. That belief may be accurate in many cases, but Boston’s head coach, Brad Stevens, feels differently about this particular group.

“When you’re the player, you decide how you’re going to play night in and night out,” Stevens said. “We’ve got guys who are willing to compete, so I like that.”

Who wouldn’t? Coaches around the league must be envious of Boston’s first-year coach. He has a team made up of young players who bring it every second of every game, regardless of the circumstance. You just don’t find that very often in the NBA, as Jeff Green acknowledged after Tuesday’s defeat.

“It’s very special,” Green said. “We always give ourselves a chance to win games, and no matter how much time is left, we’re going to fight until the end.”

Maybe that’s because this team is as blue collar as it gets at this level. The Celtics bring the proverbial lunch pail to work every day.

“We want to be one of those teams that are consistent at [playing hard every night], kind of like somebody being a hard worker, and that’s a talent,” Bradley said. “We want to bring that to the table every single night.”

Bradley then pointed out a harsh reality, but followed it up with a refreshing declaration.

“We know we aren’t as talented as every other team,” he said, “but we know that we can work harder than every other team. That’s our thing.”

Those words would be music to any coach’s ears, especially Valvano’s. He told us all not to give up – not to ever give up – and the Celtics are proud of the fact that they never will.



bob


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Their grit is what makes this team lovable.

Sam

Winston Churchill said the same thing, but repeated it two more times.

worcester wrote:Winston Churchill said the same thing, but repeated it two more times.

worcester,

That's because he was drunk.

Just kidding, Winnie is one of my favorite historical figures.

bob


.

One you're going through hell, keep going.
---Winston Churchill

This has informed me during my darkest hours.

Winnie never would have said, "Don't give up."  He would have said something like, "Up with which don't ever give."

Sam

You are correct Sam. Here's what Winnie actually said, and it is so much more moving and inspirational. We were blessed to have him amongst us:

Prime Minister Winston Churchill:

Almost a year has passed since I came down here at your Head Master's kind invitation in order to cheer myself and cheer the hearts of a few of my friends by singing some of our own songs.

The ten months that have passed have seen very terrible catastrophic events in the world—ups and downs, misfortunes— but can anyone sitting here this afternoon, this October afternoon, not feel deeply thankful for what has happened in the time that has passed and for the very great improvement in the position of our country and of our home?

Why, when I was here last time we were quite alone, desperately alone, and we had been so for five or six months. We were poorly armed. We are not so poorly armed today; but then we were very poorly armed. We had the unmeasured menace of the enemy and their air attack still beating upon us, and you yourselves had had experience of this attack; and I expect you are beginning to feel impatient that there has been this long lull with nothing particular turning up!

But we must learn to be equally good at what is short and sharp and what is long and tough. It is generally said that the British are often better at the last. They do not expect to move from crisis to crisis; they do not always expect that each day will bring up some noble chance of war; but when they very slowly make up their minds that the thing has to be done and the job put through and finished, then, even if it takes months—if it takes years—they do it.

Another lesson I think we may take, just throwing our minds back to our meeting here ten months ago and now, is that appearances are often very deceptive, and as Kipling well says, we must "...meet with Triumph and Disaster. And treat those two impostors just the same."

You cannot tell from appearances how things will go. Sometimes imagination makes things out far worse than they are; yet without imagination not much can be done. Those people who are imaginative see many more dangers than perhaps exist; certainly many more than will happen; but then they must also pray to be given that extra courage to carry this far-reaching imagination.

But for everyone, surely, what we have gone through in this period—I am addressing myself to the School—surely from this period of ten months, this is the lesson:

Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in, except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.

We stood all alone a year ago, and to many countries it seemed that our account was closed, we were finished. All this tradition of ours, our songs, our School history, this part of the history of this country, were gone and finished and liquidated.

Very different is the mood today. Britain, other nations thought, had drawn a sponge across her slate. But instead our country stood in the gap. There was no flinching and no thought of giving in; and by what seemed almost a miracle to those outside these Islands, though we ourselves never doubted it, we now find ourselves in a position where I say that we can be sure that we have only to persevere to conquer.

You sang here a verse of a School Song: you sang that extra verse written in my honor, which I was very greatly complimented by and which you have repeated today. But there is one word in it I want to alter—I wanted to do so last year, but I did not venture to. It is the line: "Not less we praise in darker days."

I have obtained the Head Master's permission to alter darker to sterner. "Not less we praise in sterner days."

Do not let us speak of darker days: let us speak rather of sterner days. These are not dark days; these are great days—the greatest days our country has ever lived; and we must all thank God that we have been allowed, each of us according to our stations, to play a part in making these days memorable in the history of our race.

Sorry guys. I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and SWEAT! (A rock and roll band from the 60's/early 70's came out of that as well)

sam wrote:Winnie never would have said, "Don't give up."  He would have said something like, "Up with which don't ever give."

LOL - literally. Thanks.

FYI, Sam's little joke here is based on an apocryphal story about Winston Churchill, who when supposedly corrected for the grammar "mistake" of ending a sentence with a preposition, replied, "This is the sort of nonsense up with which I will not put."

The story illustrates how awkward sentences can get when complying with the supposed "no preposition at the end of sentence" rule, furthering the argument that it's a totally bogus rule.

My other favorite anecdote regarding this point, told in various versions (and which I believe I've related here before) -- a guy from Philly is lost while in London and asks a proper English gentleman, "Excuse me, where's the subway at?" The gentleman replies, "My good fellow, don't you know that it's not proper English to end a sentence with a preposition?" To which the guy from Philly replies, "Okay, where's the subway at, asshole?"

Sorry for the overly long explanation of a wonderfully concise joke by Sam, but as a fan of language, I just get a kick out of this stuff. My kids think I'm weird.

I may be drunk, Miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly.


You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else.


All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.



Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.


I always avoid prophesying beforehand, because it is a much better policy to prophesy after the event has already taken place. (actually said first by our own Slippery Sam).


Lady Astor said to Churchill, "If you were my husband, I'd poison your tea," to which he responded, "Madam, if you were my wife, I'd drink it!"



bob


.

Outside, I've heard several sources of the "asshole" comment, including baseball umpire, Steve Palermo who, in 1991, was crippled by a bullet to the spine when he tried to thwart a mugging in Dallas. At a Boston Baseball Writers Dinner, he plugged Lou Piniella's name into the story in asking where a pitch was at. Steve allegedly responded that he didn't answer questions ending in prepositions, whereupon Piniella reportedly delivered the punch line. Who knows where it originated?

As you know, I still believe in the rule of not ending a sentence (or a clause, for that matter) with a preposition unless there's no other way to avoid awkwardness. For example, I don't recall ever telling a noisy daughter to "Up shut." But, while not trying to impose anything on anyone else, I consider myself lazy of I don't search for a meaningful alternative 99.9% of the time. Otherwise, the sentence sounds to me as if I'm scratching a blackboard.

Sam

Sam,

Lou Pinella may have been born and raised in Florida and associated mostly as a player with the Yankees, but he's a fine stand-in for the Philly guy.