Analyst sends strong message on Boston Celtics Game 5 collapse: ‘Makes me worry’
The Boston Celtics freaked out many analysts with their Game 5 collapse against the Hawks…on their TD Garden home parquet…with Dejounte Murray suspended. With a chance to show that they were the team to beat in the east considering the top-seeded Bucks’ disappointing showing against the Heat in the No. 1-No. 8 matchup, Boston laid an egg in the fourth quarter’s closing moments — with the dagger being a Trae Young 3-pointer with 1.8 seconds remaining on the clock — to lose 119-117, with a trip to Atlanta for Game 6 now necessary.
ESPN’s Jay Williams shared his worries following the shocking fourth-quarter debacle from Boston.
“They lost the first quarter in a close-out game at home. You can’t do things (like that),” Williams said on the April 26 edition of ESPN’s “Get Up.” “I would think a team like Boston, who got to the NBA Finals last year, who had the performances like Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown did, even with what happened at the beginning of the season with Ime Udoke no longer being their coach (and) Joe Mazzulla taking over, I would’ve thought they would’ve entered the playoffs with a lot more venom, with a lot more passion. Watching the way they finished out this game without Dejounte Murray playing (for the Hawks), this series going back to Atlanta, it makes me worry about their next-round series against the Philadelphia 76ers.”
As 13-point favorites on some sportsbooks, the Celtics had perhaps the worst beat of the 2023 postseason so far on April 25.
Boston Celtics first-round struggles could ‘foreshadow’ future postseason issues
NESN’s Ricky Doyle isn’t too overly concerned about the Boston Celtics getting past the Hawks (for now) but he does worry that the team’s Game 5 struggles could foreshadow issues against the Sixers in the Eastern Conference semifinals.
“The Celtics aren’t necessarily in trouble — yet,” Doyle wrote. “They still hold a 3-2 series lead, and they’ve looked like the superior team for large stretches of the best-of-seven set. It’s concerning, though, that Boston keeps letting Atlanta hang around. And now, the Hawks will host Game 6 on their home floor Thursday night with a chance to force a winner-take-all Game 7 back at TD Garden. If nothing else, the Celtics’ inability to put away the Hawks could foreshadow trouble in the next round, where they’d face the 76ers, or further down the road.”
It should be pointed out that the 76ers have their own issues, with Joel Embiid’s availability for the Eastern Conference semifinals up in the air. At this point, though, it’s not clear if Boston’s stagnation is an enviable problem considering teams more easily overcome injuries than they do complacency.