"Why should they care if their coach doesn't?"
How about "Why should their coach care if they don't?" This isn't high school basketball. These are grown men who are getting paid a lot of money to do this. If they are not going to give effort or listen then what is Don Nelson going to do? I tend to give Don Nelson the benefit of the doubt because I've seen him in about 400+ games doing what a good coach does. Now he gets blamed as the reason why the players gave up? I find that hard to believe.