(Chinese New Year's Eve water chapter, I wish you all a happy new year.) Interested book friends can add my WeChat jiangleiyu001 to the group to send red envelopes to everyone. Without him, I just hope that everyone will be happy in the new year. Jim O'Brien had some sleepless nights in the days leading up to the preseason season, and he had been sleeping only three or four hours a day for the Boston Celtics for the new season. Compared to last year's harvest of Celtic, this year the team is undoubtedly asking for more, and the pressure on being a head coach is understandable.

In the NBA coaching position, it is not like other jobs to sit for longer and more skillful and relaxed, on the contrary, the newly appointed head coach is often the best to carry out the work, and it is also the easiest to unite people and produce results. Over time, the longer you stay in the same team coaching role, the more internal and external pressure will be, and when the team collapses one day, the coach becomes the first scapegoat.

Throughout the history of the NBA, coaches who have led teams to championships have tended to reach the top of their ranks in their first three years at the helm, such as Pat Riley, Phil Jackson, Tom Janovic, Lenny Wilkens, and KC Jones. This is also the reason why Larry Bird is only willing to coach the Pacers for three years, and if he can't win a championship, he will be laid off, three years is a hurdle for a coach, three years can't bring the desired achievements, and then it will be too difficult to win the championship in the future, at this time the team will generally choose to change coaches. This is one of the reasons why Pitino has not been able to stay in the managerial position for three years, and everyone, including himself, has run out of patience.

O'Brien, who took over the Celtics in his first year, had a very good season last year, and the devastation left by Pitino made fans throughout Boston quite tolerant of O'Brien, and Pierce's quick recovery, Rodman's consistent on-court performance and decent off-court life, and Michael Reed's unexpected potential have all rejuvenated the Celtics under O'Brien. Not to mention re-entering the playoffs, the Celtics also showed the potential of a strong team in the coach with the Bucks, although the total score of 3:1 was not good, but except for the first defeat in Milwaukee, the other three Celtics fought with the powerful Bucks to the last moment.

This achievement was undoubtedly beyond the expectations of Boston fans, especially the fact that he led the team back to the playoffs, which made O'Brien one of Boston's most watched sports personalities for a while, and Boston's media even began to compare him to Bill Bellick, the coach of the NFL's New England Patriots. This undoubtedly made O'Brien, who has been under Pitino as an obscure assistant coach, turn over and become one of the representatives of NBA's new coaches, but it has put huge pressure on O'Brien in the new season, because fans and media will no longer be satisfied with making the first round of the playoffs and then having a defeat, especially after experiencing a bumper harvest in this draft, some media even used this draft as an analogy to the 1980 Celtics' salted fish turnaround draft. That year, they acquired Kevin McHale and traded Robert Parish, and the lineup that dominated an era was built overnight.

The Bostonians are eager for such a miracle to be repeated, O'Brien is their new Bill Feige, for such a team with a glorious tradition but has gone through such a long period of darkness, any gradual, brick-by-brick team rebuilding can not satisfy the people here, and in the history of the Celtics have never spent more than ten years honing a roster and a strategy like the Utah Jazz, they like to climb to the sky one step at a time, only championships and victories can satisfy them.

That's the pressure on O'Brien, and even more so from within, as he finds himself as head coach and doesn't have much control over the direction of the team, especially in this draft, where his opinion has had little effect. A head coach should have a big idea in the draft and trades, and some powerful coaches can even decide who to pick and who to trade.

In the special period when the power of the Celtics presented a general manager-president-head coach triangle, the head coach completely lost the right to speak on the team building, and the general manager completely fell to the side of Danny Ainge, and the two of them completed the Madison draft decision and the trade process in Boston, and O'Brien's job for those two days was to sit in the stands of Garden Square and watch the scene.

O'Brien certainly knows that it wasn't Danny Ainge and Chris Wallace who really decided all this, but Arnold Auerbach, the big controller behind the Green Army. Auerbach has protégés in almost every department, with owner Garth Communications serving as Auerbach, and the Boston consortium, rumored to be buying the Celtics, also has a close relationship with Auerbach. Regardless of O'Brien's success last season, he ended up with Pitino in the Celtics' "alien group," who came from Kentucky and had Kentucky blood in their blood. In New England and Massachusetts, it's always that out of place.

As a consequence of not being able to participate in the draft and trade decisions, O'Brien is not happy with the current roster, especially with three talented youngsters at the guard position, but the interior is as lacklustre as ever. While Fox Leon has promised to sign a promising defensive interior player when the new season begins, O'Brien doesn't think there is such a player in the free agency market right now. Dennis Rodman is another year older, and no one knows when he will suddenly have a nervous break, kick over the drink barrel on the sideline and retire directly. And Rodman has never been a basket-guarding interior lineman, and O'Brien is hungry for a solid, reliable, and strong defensive interior to deal with the offensive beast that is now rampant in the NBA.

There's a chance of that kind of growth, but he's still too young for O'Brien to think he can't wait for the Haitians to really grow into towering trees, and he needs instant power and players who fit his style of play, rather than running around the world with a bunch of little guys who can only shoot hoops on the outside — O'Brien thinks so anyway.

As the preseason approaches, the Celtics' training camp is about to start in full swing, but so far O'Brien has not come up with a clear coaching idea to establish the direction of the Celtics this season, and he has stayed up all night these days to think about it, he keeps calling Vogel and Dick Hart, and talking about it late at night, but they are still confused because of the lack of power, and many plans cannot be realistically implemented.

After a long struggle, O'Brien picked up the phone one night, and this time instead of Vogel or Hart, he dialed his father-in-law, Jack Ramsay. At this time, it was already eleven o'clock in the evening, and the ordinary old man had already fallen asleep, but O'Brien knew that his father-in-law had always had a habit of going to bed late, and he would not go to bed until two o'clock in the evening, which he left when he coached the Portland Trail Blazers.

As the NBA's famous championship coach, Jack Ramsey's most glorious moment was in his first year at the helm of the Portland Trail Blazers, where they won the only championship trophy in franchise history. After that, with Wharton's injury, he and the Trail Blazers never reached the top again. When O'Brien first coached the Celtics last season, O'Brien, the new head coach, had to talk to his father-in-law on the phone almost every night about the day's work, a habit that didn't stop until the offseason.

Now O'Brien knows it's time to pick up the phone again and ask the experienced Ramsey to answer his questions, and maybe Ramsey can bring substantial help, because O'Brien was able to directly become the head coach of the Celtics last season, and the friendship between Ramsey and Auerbach played a role in it.

The phone beeped twice and then it was connected, and Ramsay's gruff voice came from the other end of the microphone: "I know it's you, Jim, is there something wrong with the team again?" ”

O'Brien wanted to say, "Father-in-law, you still know me," but he couldn't help but clear his throat and said, "Sorry to bother you again so late." Pre-season was about to start, the squad wasn't what I expected, I didn't know how to adjust, I couldn't speak in management. ”

O'Brien and the old man had almost nothing to say, and he could only talk to Ramsey about questions like this. This also seems to be a big problem for Ramsey, who is not ignorant of Celtic's team structure. And he has also been silently following his son-in-law's development in the Celts, and the special situation he faces is also something that Ramsay has not encountered in the past. He thought for a long time on the other end of the microphone before he said to O'Brien: "If you're out of the team's plans in the first place, be prepared to leave early, especially if your rivals are strong. If you're not willing to be a transitioner, then I bet they'll have a new one. You know who they really want to inherit the throne in the end, and he's on the edge right now. ”

O'Brien knows that Ramsey is talking about Fox Leon, and he is indeed very sharp, and almost everyone knows about becoming Auerbach's heir, from a scout to an assistant coach, and he doesn't know when he will become a head coach. He's risen so fast, but he's also been able to deliver real results. The data and video analysis system he and Vogel established last season has become an important reference for O'Brien's coaching. He gave an excellent scouting report in the draft and played a major role in the formation of the Development League. In the summer, it was also rumored that he went to the University of Southern California to complete his coaching training, and everything was moving in the direction of becoming a head coach.

After ten minutes, O'Brien no longer had the heart to continue talking to his father-in-law, and they ended the conversation after talking about family life. After hanging up the phone, O'Brien sighed deeply, he didn't expect that the little scout he first met in Chicago had grown into his current successor, but O'Brien didn't want to give up his position as coach and his hard-won reputation so easily.

He decided to lead the Celts on a path he had designed for himself.