"Winning Takes Precedent Over Everything" - Jayson Tatum Thankfully Sounds More Than Ready To Combat "The Disease Of Me"
Over 40 years ago, Pat Riley famously wrote a book titled "The Winner Within" in which he talked about something called "The Disease of Me". The idea is that after some success, people may start operating in their best interest as opposed to the best interests of the team. In that book, he listed 7 signals that someone might be suffering from "The Disease of Me"
1. Inexperience dealing with sudden success
2. Chronic feelings of under-appreciation
3. Paranoia over being cheated out of one's rightful share
4. Resentment against competence of partners
5. Personal effort mustered solely to outside a teammate
6. A leadership vacuum resulting from the formation of cliques and rivalries
7. Feelings of frustration even when the team performs successfully.
So why does this matter? Enter the 2024-25 Boston Celtics. Heading into their title defense season, we've heard from Joe Mazzulla talk about how he wants the target to be between his eyes and that the Celts need to approach things like the best hunters in the animal kingdom and be aggressive. But that's only part of the equation. For a roster that has zero holes and a style of play that produced some of the most dominant basketball the league has ever seen, the biggest worry to have outside of health for this upcoming season is how everyone on the roster combats "The Disease of Me".
What made this team truly special was that everyone sacrificed. It started with Al Horford announcing he'd be willing to come off the bench before the season even started. Jrue Holiday completely changed his role as a Celtic. KP went from being a #1 option to basically a #3 option. Tatum took a step back offensively in terms of shots. The list goes on and on. Without that collective sacrifice, I truly believe they do not win the title.
The big question now of course is can they keep it going, or will things shift now that they actually won? Will Tatum or Brown change how they play in an attempt to go after more individual awards? For Jaylen maybe that means All NBA, for Tatum it means MVP. As we know, successful teams and organizations have strong leadership, and to me, that starts with the best players. How they approach the game sets the tone for the rest of the roster, which is why hearing Jayson Tatum talk about this subject should have every Celts fan over the moon.
Bobby Krivitsky: There's a narrative from people who wonder, now that you've won a championship, will you be more self-indulgent in pursuit of an MVP? What's your outlook on wanting an accolade like that while putting the team first and keeping winning as the priority?
Jayson Tatum: Yeah, winning takes precedence over everything. Winning a championship is the most important. Playing the right way. But it's been done. It's possible. You can play the right way, you can dominate the game, you can strive for a championship, and be an MVP of the league. So, you don't have to sacrifice one for the other. You can do both.
Now you may be saying to yourself that this is a pretty boilerplate answer and all that, and I can understand why. Here's the thing though, they say actions are louder than words and we've already seen Tatum sacrifice and play team basketball. When it comes to the MVP, all top 5 guys were among the league leaders in usage. Embiid (38.7%), Luka (35.5%), SGA (31.7%), Brunson (31.1%), Jokic (28.8%), only Jokic finished the year with a lesser usage rate than Tatum. The point is, the MVP award has basically turned into a "who has the ball the most" award, and given the talent on the Celts' roster and how Tatum has had to adjust his game, it's no surprise he finds himself 6th on that list.
From the sounds of it, you don't really get the sense that "The Disease of Me" is going to be a problem with this group. Time will obviously tell, but when your two best players are selfless basketball players and all the pieces around them are selfless basketball players and you just won the title playing a certain way, if anyone is built to resist that temptation it's probably the 2024-25 Celts. That doesn't mean it guarantees a title, but what it does mean is that the train should keep on rolling in terms of how they play, which happens to be a style of basketball that no one has proven the ability to stop.
It's certainly not easy to prevent The Disease of Me from spreading, no matter the sport. We see it all the time to some of the best teams in history. What makes this team unique is the fact that everyone just got paid. There's no need to force things for a potential contract because Brad Stevens was handing those things out this summer like he was Oprah
The literal only thing the players have to worry about is staying healthy and starting their journey back up the championship mountain. If individual awards come with it, cool. If not? Also cool, because as Tatum said, winning takes precedence over everything.