[BostonCard]

1774984011[/url]']
However, even though the personal relationships with teammates and coaches can be strong, players can still be miserable. That's because of an overriding factor, which is the environment that they have to go to every single day. No one can convince me that our team as a whole was "happy" this year. You could see it on the players faces, but moreso you could see it in how they played. It's not fun to lose as a team, especially if you feel that the team should be playing differently together (e.g. a different style of offense). It really stinks to not play well in your role and to not improve (or perhaps worse, if you think you are in the wrong role or your role is too limited). At some point you start to lose faith in the coaches and the organization, and it's downhill from there. IMO, a lot of that was going on this year. Pretty similar to the working world. You can get along great with your boss and love who you work with, but if the company is not doing well, or you aren't in a great role and you aren't advancing your career, then you just don't enjoy coming to work every day. Day, after day, after day. At some point you conclude it's time to move on, and all the while you really enjoy the people around you. This likely has happened to many on this board.

I think the above assumes a lot of facts that may or may not be true and may be a projection of the author’s own feelings.  That’s not to say that the players don’t feel that way.  They very well might.  But this is a bit of a black box where there is a small amount of observable evidence and so we’re trying to impute what we can’t see, and so it is very prone to reflect our own feelings about the situation.  And this goes both ways; 2006alum’s anecdote about the snowball fight might be reflective of a cohesive team having a spontaneous moment, but it could also reflect a brief respite from ongoing drama.  The bottom line is that we have very limited insight into what’s going on behind the scenes, and while the comments I’ve seen that have been directly attributable to the players or their families have been universally positive, I would expect publicly shared comments to be guarded.  All else being equal, winning is a lot more fun than losing, but I don’t know that it is clear that the players have “lost faith in the coaches and the organization”.  We had a very rough stretch where we lost 8 out of 9 games (coincident with losing Lepolo and for a large part Agara), but then we won three straight games to end the regular season that would argue against a downward spiral and that the staff has lost the team.

Is it possible that the staff has lost the team?  Maybe.  But I think we should be clear that it is BillBradley who has lost faith in the coaches and the organization; whether the players have is an open question.

BC

[BostonCard]

1774984011[/url]']
However, even though the personal relationships with teammates and coaches can be strong, players can still be miserable. That's because of an overriding factor, which is the environment that they have to go to every single day. No one can convince me that our team as a whole was "happy" this year. You could see it on the players faces, but moreso you could see it in how they played. It's not fun to lose as a team, especially if you feel that the team should be playing differently together (e.g. a different style of offense). It really stinks to not play well in your role and to not improve (or perhaps worse, if you think you are in the wrong role or your role is too limited). At some point you start to lose faith in the coaches and the organization, and it's downhill from there. IMO, a lot of that was going on this year. Pretty similar to the working world. You can get along great with your boss and love who you work with, but if the company is not doing well, or you aren't in a great role and you aren't advancing your career, then you just don't enjoy coming to work every day. Day, after day, after day. At some point you conclude it's time to move on, and all the while you really enjoy the people around you. This likely has happened to many on this board.

I think the above assumes a lot of facts that may or may not be true and may be a projection of the author’s own feelings.  That’s not to say that the players don’t feel that way.  They very well might.  But this is a bit of a black box where there is a small amount of observable evidence and so we’re trying to impute what we can’t see, and so it is very prone to reflect our own feelings about the situation.  And this goes both ways; 2006alum’s anecdote about the snowball fight might be reflective of a cohesive team having a spontaneous moment, but it could also reflect a brief respite from ongoing drama.  The bottom line is that we have very limited insight into what’s going on behind the scenes, and while the comments I’ve seen that have been directly attributable to the players or their families have been universally positive, I would expect publicly shared comments to be guarded.  All else being equal, winning is a lot more fun than losing, but I don’t know that it is clear that the players have “lost faith in the coaches and the organization”.  We had a very rough stretch where we lost 8 out of 9 games (coincident with losing Lepolo and for a large part Agara), but then we won three straight games to end the regular season that would argue against a downward spiral and that the staff has lost the team.

Is it possible that the staff has lost the team?  Maybe.  But I think we should be clear that it is BillBradley who has lost faith in the coaches and the organization; whether the players have is an open question.

BC