As much as any team in sports history, the Boston Celtics of the 1960s are known for their incredible teamwork. Head coach Red Auerbach said he paid his players more for what they could do to help the team win than for their individual statistics. Auerbach once told this story about former Boston Celtic Satch Sanders:

"There was a time around his third or fourth year when Satch Sanders got to thinking that it might be nice to score a few points on his own. So without being too obvious, he began taking more shots. One night he scored fifteen points. Another night he managed to get eighteen. Meanwhile, no one said a word about it. Our policy was that the ball belonged to everyone; nobody had exclusive rights to it. It you thought you had a good shot, you were not only encouraged to take it, you were expected to take it.

Then, one night he scored around twenty points, and we lost. It bothered him all the way home. He thought about it long into the night, then came to the following conclusion: 'All it takes to upset the balance of this beautiful machine of ours is one man crossing over into another man's specialty. So I decided that night it was a much bigger claim to say that I was a member of the world champion team than it was to say I averaged thirty-five points a game.'"

Auerbach's Celtics won an incredible eight straight NBA championships from 1959-1966. Some have even called them the greatest dynasty in the history of professional sports. And the key to that amazing string of victories is not a star player, but the team.

The world of college basketball also reflects this.

Who's the greatest college basketball coach of all time? Any spectator, coach or player would say it's undoubtedly John Wooden.

Wooden coached the UCLA Bruins to more college basketball championships than any other NCAA coach in history. What was his secret to success? Teamwork. And not just the "Come on guys, let's all work together like a team" kind of thing while every player really does his own thing. Wooden produced genuine, authentic, real teamwork.

Coach Wooden insisted on a level of dedication and selflessness that is almost unheard of today. The team was more important than any player. In the interest of uniformity, no player was allowed to sport facial hair. When a young recruit named Bill Walton was confronted with that rule, he said to Wooden, "Coach, I have a beard and I'm going to keep it."

Wooden simply smiled and said, "We're going to miss you, Bill."

Needless to say, Walton shaved the beard.

Each year Wooden identified the five men who best complemented one another and worked together and those were the ones he started. His motto was, "The most important player when we win - is the rest of the team."

Wooden used to encourage his players to acknowledge the assists of their teammates. If one player received a pass that allowed him to score, Wooden wanted him to give the other man a wink or point to him as they moved down to the opposite end of the court.

"But what if the other player isn't looking when you point him out?" a new player asked Wooden once.

Wooden just smiled: "Oh, don't worry. He'll be looking."

Auerbach and Wooden understood the power of teamwork and show us that accolades don't win championships. Teams do.