Celtics Aren’t Cocky They’re Confident

Ja Rule, a somewhat famous rapper of the 20th and 21st century, once used the lyrics, “And I’m not cocky, I’m confident, So when you tell me I’m the best it’s a compliment.” He used this in one of his hit songs “New York” and it stuck out to me when I saw a recent quote on the Boston Globe’s Celtics Blog from Boston Celtics center Rasheed Wallace.

"“It’s not being cocky. There’s a difference between being confident and cocky. We’re just confident, we know what we can do, we know our skills, and we know that our skills can take us to June.”"

Sometimes the Celtics can rub off on opposing fans and teams as being a very cocky bunch.  I’m sure it is very easy to say the Celtics are a cocky group of players when Rasheed is predicting over 72 wins, and talks of banner 18 are always in the air. What some people fail to realize is that the Celtics use most of this talk as motivation to succeed. Granted, like every other NBA team (even the Nets), the Celtics are a little cocky at times (Refer to this video). This does have a lot to do with the term that we like to call “Swagger”.

In a recent article on Gino’s Jungle, Celtic’s 17 owner Graham Brunell questioned how much “swagger” the Celtics really need. I do agree with him that there is a limit to how much swagger a NBA team, or individual should have; however, Graham’s main argument was gathered from the Paul Pierce dunk on Chris Bosh, which was referenced above. He stated that he believed the stare down after the dunk was too much, and that Pierce crossed the line from confident to cocky.

I disagreed with him and here’s why:

1. The Celtics had only won two in a row at that point.

2. They had lost three out of their last four games before that.

3. They needed something to get them going, as they had not reached full confidence in themselves yet.

4. The reaction from Pierce and the rest of his teammates showed that they were excited because of the way they were playing, and the way they realized they could play when playing their best basketball. In no way did they attempt to put down their opponent (Toronto).

This dunk could have been it, or it may not have been but every so often a team needs a little bit of “swagger” to get them to kick it in full gear and regain confidence within the team. Since then you don’t see the Celtics dancing on the sideline, or talking out about their eleven game winning streak, they are simply confident and winning basketball games. Following the victory over the Raptors the Celtics are 9-0, and as Sheed said they are a confident group of guys. Let’s hope the confidence remains high, and like Sheed said, “we’re one of the teams going to be playing in June.”