Stars are aligned for Celtics

It's been a rough month and a half for the Celtics. After cruising through the first half of the regular season like a team that was destined to bring yet another NBA title to Boston, the Celtics entered last night's game at the Garden in a dogfight with the Bulls for the Eastern Conference's No. 1 seed.

The Celtics have struggled with injuries, especially to 39-year-old center Shaquille O'Neal. Point guard Rajon Rondo -- the youngest member of the starting five -- is just coming out of a rough period in which he hasn't played his best. And their older team has continued to have problems in the second game of back-to-backs, having lost five in a row.

The one problem the Celtics aren't having is chemistry. Despite being built around three superstars, there's no confusion about who is supposed to take the big shot at the end of games. There's no talk about crying in the locker room after big losses. And there's no five-alarm panic even after the ugliest of games, such as the one they had last week against the Nets in New Jersey.

Heat hasn't meshed

While the Miami Heat has spent the season trying to figure out how to make its three-superstar team work, the Celtics -- who brought the three-superstar concept back into vogue three years ago when Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen won an NBA title in their first season together -- have continued to play as a united front.

The lack of egos and agendas in Boston has gained them some awe and admiration around the league. Recently, it was a big reason Troy Murphy picked the Celtics over the Heat after the Warriors bought out his contract in February.

"This is a team where they really don't care who shoots the ball and they really don't care who scores," Murphy said. "They want you to take open shots. They are completely unselfish."

Said Allen: "We know each other and trust each other. We just want to do what we need to do to win."

No, not all Big 3 teams are created equal. And though there's strong sentiment that Miami's LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh eventually will get their act together and be a force for years to come, there's equally strong sentiment that the best players don't always combine to make the best team.

Timing just right

Bulls coach Tom Thibodeau, who was the Celtics' top assistant the previous three seasons, believes age and timing are the two big reasons Boston was able to win immediately when Allen and Garnett were brought in to join Pierce in the summer of 2007.

"All three were coming in from tough seasons where their teams didn't make the playoffs through no fault of their own," Thibodeau said. "I think they recognized right away that they had enough talent to win, but that alone wasn't going to be enough. They made the commitment to sacrifice. They made the commitment to play defense. They sacrificed a lot of their own individual stuff for the greater good of the team."

In their first season together, the Celtics' Big 3 had a combined 32 years of NBA playing experience. Miami has 21.

Equally as telling is the age of the players. At the start of their first season together, Allen was 32, Garnett 31 and Pierce 30. What's important here, some say, is that the two players that were being brought in were older than Pierce, the player who had been there, so they had the maturity to let the identity of the team remain his.

The Heat, by contrast, instantly was James' team in a lot of people's minds, even though Wade is the one who had been playing there, was the oldest player on the team (28) and was the only one of the three to win an NBA title. Wade still seems to be deferring to James at the end of games, and this often seems to create confusion as to who is going to take the last shot.

In losses to the Bulls, Knicks and Magic in late February and early March, James took the big shots late, missing potential tying or winning shots in each.

"It's not just about getting stars, it's about building a team," Nets general manager Billy King said. "Boston didn't just go out and get three stars, they got a great '2' guard and a power forward to go with Paul Pierce. It works because Ray Allen doesn't need a lot of shots and Garnett doesn't need a lot of shots. In Miami, it's a bigger adjustment because Dwyane was in a situation where he had the ball a lot, LeBron was in Cleveland where he had the ball a lot and Bosh also had the ball a lot."

Willingness to sacrifice

Celtics coach Doc Rivers said some players just aren't ready, or never will be ready, to sacrifice their individual statistics for the good of the team. And he said the hard part is figuring out who those guys are.

"I don't know if it's so much where you are in your career as it is where you are in your mind," Rivers said. "If you want to win, you'll win. If you want to be an individual player, you'll be an individual player.

"I don't think you can ever know for sure about a guy until he is on your team. I've brought guys in where other coaches have called me up and said that I just shouldn't have them. And they've turned out great. I've had other guys with the best rep in the league, and it just doesn't work out."

Things still are working out in Boston. Their recent play hasn't been stellar, but there is some thought that veteran players are trying to save some energy at the end of the long grind of the regular season. A year ago, the Celtics looked plain old as they went 10-9 down the stretch of the regular season. But then they knocked off the Heat, the Cavaliers and the Magic in the playoffs before taking the Lakers to seven games in the NBA Finals.

Said Thibodeau: "I think for the guys on that team, the only thing left for them is to win championships. They've done the individual stuff. They've wanted to be viewed as one of the all-time great teams. And I think they are."