I thought I'd talk about patience, as many people don't have any. The topic started from basketball so it will also be a basketball rant about what's going on with the Boston Celtics.

I'll start with some background, and will later move to the more general topic. For those of you who don't know the Celtics got together 3 amazing but not so young players (Garnett, Pierce, Allen)  2 years ago and won a championship with them.


Last year one of them, Garnett, was injured and they lost. This year started very promising but quickly turned bad with many losses. Garnett doesn't seem to have completely healed from last year and perhaps never will, and Pierce got injured too and looks really bad. The team in general looks like they're about 90 years old barely managing to move, and being flown by by the young studs of competing teams. So goes appearance.
People are now calling to break up the big three, as they're called, and ship Ray Allen away for, well whomever, but preferably a young stud. The reason for Ray Allen to be shipped away and not the other two are less comprehenislbe. Mostly, for technical reasons even if Allen was a bad player they could get something for him (because he has an expiring contract) but this doesn't helps less when he's a good player. Pierce was a Celtic for a long time so is loved by the town though he carries the brunt of the fault for their troubles as he has returned to his egotistical self instead of team oriented this year (apparently a 2 year hiatus from that role was too much to bare for him). Garnett, well he is adored. Allen is constantly the underappreciated player so is the easiest to ship out. Sadly this is also a reason they can't get that much for him.

Now comes the part about patience. People say you play for a championship but the moment some problems appear, oh no, let's tear everything down and start anew. Let's build for a decade from now to maybe have a chance then for a championship.  If they ship Allen out the chance of winning a championship this year are quite slim. They exist, but are very slim. No, it's to build for a rosier future who knows when. What is patience then, to hold out now, or to be patient and look for the future, some might ask. Clearly impatience can be described as patience, but acting now is an impatient move.

There is a good chance Ray Allen will be shipped, and let me say clearly that that's simply idiotic. Probably. Allen is their best player, even if this year the constant question of whether he will actually remain a Celtic has been a distraction and he hasn't been shooting as well as usual. What are these people reacting to? They are reacting to the Celtics losing. Let me then give you a different description than above:
The Celtics are older that's true, and they had a lot of injuries, but they have been close and even led most of the games they are losing. The reason they are losing is that they simply don't care to win. You can see it on them, you can feel it, they just don't care to win these games, even the important ones. They are waiting for the playoffs where it will matter. Can you flip a switch and change at that time, I doubt it, but teams have known to have done that (Houston comes to mind). If they remain intact, when the time comes and they'll care about winning, they'll do better. Now, in the dog days of the season, they can't muster the energy to actually care about it. Is that a reason to break them up and give up on the chance for a championship?

The only reason then to ship Allen (and I'm being simplistic here not to drown you with details) is if you give up on the season and try to build for sometime in the future. You do this if you know Kevin Garnett will not heal from his knee problem. But if this is the case, no point in keeping Garnett and Pierce to a rebuilding project which will take a few years to be ready (and if anything Allen is the most fit to keep, for financial reasons).
Sadly, because of what I can only call stupidity, they seem to be preparing to ship him out of there.

People have no patience and the moment something goes bad they immediately run for the hills. It's sad to see, but it happens everywhere. In the How to do good science discussion the importance of maintaining your way even when problems arise comes up. Any serious work confronts a lot of setbacks and belief, belief in yourself and in your project, is the only way to achieve anything of significance. You need to trust yourself also when the going gets tough. Casement Rogers quotes Hemingway saying the definition of courage is 'grace under pressure.' Well, many people are not so courageous.

Sometimes though you have to cut your losses. In the  same good science discussion the problem of hitting a wall also appears.Sometimes one doesn't want to acknowledge problems, doesn't want to understand the need to change directions. But if you do see the need, don't be half-ass about it. In the case of the Celtics this means shipping the big three. If they do that they can create a formidable team which might contend again very soon. But they won't do that as this demands another kind of courage.