Boston’s ‘culture of competition’ reportedly eroded; Blake Griffin told to steer clear?

An absence of effective leadership in Boston might have cost the team a potentially valuable teammate.

The Athletic’s Jared Weiss dropped a bit of live ordinance into the Boston Celtics discourse Saturday morning fresh on the heels of a bombshell trade of starting point guard Kemba Walker to the Oklahoma City Thunder.

Revelations regarding the state of “Celtic Pride,” that autochthonous term for the longstanding mystique of the team in terms of a culture based on title acquisition point to a mythos evidently in distress. Weiss relates that “the Celtics’ culture of competition is eroding” in the eyes of some, with multiple sources gesturing towards “Kyrie Irving stomping on the Celtics logo” as evidence the team did not “exhibit the same sense of pride in the organization” that has been a hallmark of Boston teams in the past.

Touched on openly by former Celtics Finals MVP Cedric Maxwell in his recent “Celtics Lab” podcast and noted by other former Boston stars, this is a recurrent theme — and one that might have already had teambuilding consequences, per Weiss.