A lot of it is in fact effort. How do you think they all of a sudden closed the rebounding gap against Chicago? It takes a certain mindset to be a good rebounding team and when they decide they want to put the effort into rebounding they do a decent job of it. The defensive rotations falter when multiple players aren't doing their job. Being good at defense takes all 5 guys working together and that hasn't been the case. Yes, the Wizards took advantage of the IT matchup and good on them for doing so. But that doesn't explain the open 3 point shooters or players getting beat 1-on-1 off the dribble against someone other than Wall who is very tough to stop.
The Wizards starting 5 is good, but they aren't 14-20 points better than the Celtics' 5.
Just to be clear, you think that for some reason, an entire team - who we have lauded this past year for playing hard almost every night - all of sudden decide that they are not going to play hard in the most important games of the year? Because if I read you correctly, you're not saying one person didn't play hard but the entire starting lineup and perhaps most of the bench.
I'm going to have to disagree with you.
A good portion of the Cs rebounding problems went away when Rondo stopped breaking down the Cs defense and when the Bulls started going to ISO ball, which is easier for players to be in position to rebound.
Look, athletes of all stripes do ridiculous things to try to be "on" every time they go out to play. They develop elaborate rituals to try to make sure they can capture their best energy and best ability when it counts (look at my namesake; look at Ray Allen). And though they schedule pretty much every minute of every day to figure out how to be the best they can be when they hit the court, it's impossible to do that. That's why they have nights they are in the zone and nights they are not.
The Cs look to me that they play incredibly fucking hard every night. Smart plays incredibly hard. AB plays incredibly hard. IT4 might have a broken jaw and you think he's going to go out with a broken jaw and not play hard? Sometimes they have better results than others. But just because they aren't scoring or stopping their opponent, doesn't mean that they are playing hard.
One other thing. It may look like a team is playing harder when it's doing well, but it's probably just that a team is playing "free-er." When a team can't get stops or can't score, they start questioning - rightly - what the problem is and how to fix it. That questioning could mean a split second longer reaction time, which might make it look like they aren't playing very hard.
At any, rate this is my pet peeve so I'll just drop it here.