BOSTON — Take the college-aged version of each member of the Boston Celtics, and you’d have have a team primed for a deep NCAA tournament run.
These Celtics aren’t in college anymore, though, and their contributions this season have resulted in just 11 wins in 32 games.
Jared Sullinger is one of these ex-collegiate stars, having been a two-time first-team All-American during his days at Ohio State. After the Celtics’ latest loss Monday — 104-95 at home to the Charlotte Hornets — the forward discussed the difficulties of having a roster full of players like himself but lacking a true, proven NBA star.
“If you look around, everybody in here was a big impact in college basketball, or a big impact in wherever they played,” Sullinger said. “The natural ability of the individual automatically says, ‘Let me put the team on my back.’ As a team, you can’t do that. And it’s not just one person; it’s everybody.
“Look at Evan (Turner); he was National Player of the Year. Tyler (Zeller) was an 18-and-10 guy at North Carolina. Marcus Smart was the man at Oklahoma State. James Young was the man at Kentucky. Jeff Green at Georgetown. IÂ can go on and on and on. Everybody was, at one point, the focal point.”
The departure of Rajon Rondo last month left a hole both from a production and a leadership standpoint. It’s a void the team as of yet has been unable to fill, dropping seven of its first nine games following the trade.
Monday’s effort was especially lacking, particularly from Boston’s starting five. Apart from Sullinger, who led the team with 22 points and eight rebounds, no Celtics starter managed more than seven points against the Hornets.
As Sullinger sees it, each player is trying to hard to win the game by himself.
“It’s a natural habit from great players,” he said. “These are all great players. We didn’t get to the league by accident. It’s just a group of great players, and our natural ability (leads us to) try to make that home run play. But as a team, that hurts us. … Sometimes I do it. We’ve just got to step outside of ourselves and put the team first, and then the home run plays will naturally spit themselves out within our system.
“It’s called hero ball,” Sullinger continued, following a prompt from a reporter. “And we can’t play hero ball. We don’t have heroes.”
Sullinger also made it clear that he has no desire to be that hero.
“Being a hero makes you a failure,” he said. “You can’t play 1-on-5 — at all. As a team, the system’s going to spit out who’s going to score, whose night it is. We’ve just got to play basketball. We’ve just got to be better.”
Thumbnail photo via David Butler II/USA TODAY Sports Images
