The perfect setup for the perfect game



The correct team placement in sports can make or break a team, and even contribute to the outcome of it. This is all too clear for the Celtic basketball team, whose team placement has helped lead them to victory many a time. So is the team placement purely luck or is there an element of skill to this? Often times it feels like it is a bit of both. Some matches it feels like the team placement is about as random as the numbers set up on a wink bingo board! But other times it feels like the team placement is instrumental to the victory; that the team works like a well-oiled machine and does exactly what it is supposed to do.

However, no team –not even the Celtics –are perfect, and you cannot expect to win every game you play. When the Celtics lose it feels like perhaps the team placement was not the best, or maybe it was sheer luck? This has been evident in the fluctuating performances we have seen from the Celtics in the past few weeks. We have had some great wins, but there have also been some devastating losses.

Take the pre-season, for example. Out of seven games the Celtics won five of them. The lost both the first game and the last game, but had five straight wins in the middle of the pre-season. How do you explain this? Was the team placement in those matches to blame for the losses? Did the team have a fiery desire to win after the first loss of the pre-season and then put in 110%? But what about the last game? Was the team too exhausted and unmotivated? With a 96-121 loss to the Kicks, we have to wonder what was going on.

We are now six games in to the regular season, and things have not been going all too well for the Celtics. To be honest, their performance has not been the best it could have been in quite a few of the matches. We started off strong, securing a home victory of 122-117 against the Brooklyn Nets. However, things went a little bit downhill from then onwards. The Celtics suffered a devastating 99 – 105 loss to the Chicago Bulls. The next two games went a lot better –two consecutive wins! Sadly, this was then followed by two consecutive losses. With many more games left in the season, we are left to wonder how the Celtics will perform going forward.

We can only hope that the coaching team, headed up by Brad Stevens, will look critically at the team’s performances from both the pre-season as well as the games that have been played in the regular season thus far. With these games being expertly reviewed, hopefully they can make some chances with regards to the team placement as well as overall team strategy. The season is not even halfway through yet, so the Celtics really have an opportunity to make a big comeback in the coming weeks!