Losing sucks. Getting close to the ultimate goal and losing really, really sucks.
It’s why the Orlando Magic had a photo of the Lakers celebrating in Orlando at the entrance to their weight room, as a reminder. And as a result… okay, not a great example of results. But you get the idea.
Doc Rivers is doing the same thing with Boston in a sense — he wants his guys to remember how losing game seven felt, as he told Marc Spears of Yahoo!
“That won’t go away. I had dinner with [Rajon] Rondo and ‘Baby’ [Glen Davis(notes)] in Vegas and they were talking about how much it hurts. I said, ‘I hope it hurts you for the rest of your life. It should.’ “
He hopes to have better success with this tactic than Stan Van Gundy did.