Few things last forever.
Almost one year ago, the Boston Celtics watched confetti fall from the sky. Banner 18. Everything Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown, and the entire organization spent nearly a decade striving for had been accomplished. Streets lined with hundreds of thousands of fans, screaming with joy.
That title is eternal. But the feeling is long gone. And it was brutally kicked to the curb on its way out.
Boston brought nearly an identical roster into the next season in hopes of repeating as champions—a feat no one has achieved in seven years now. A 61-win regular season and five-game series against the Orlando Magic in the first round pitted them against the New York Knicks in the second. The Celtics boasted a 4-0 record against the Knicks in the regular season. But the regular season isn’t the playoffs.
In Game 1, the Celtics sported a 20-point lead. Then they lost it. In Game 2, the Celtics sported another 20-point lead. Again, it was gone in a flash. “I think, throughout the series, we probably were [the better team], and we just didn't take advantage of our opportunities,” said Al Horford.
A Game 3 blowout was met with yet another blown lead in Game 4, but Jayson Tatum trumped any and all bad tastes the loss itself left in their mouths. Tatum ruptured his Achilles late in the fourth quarter, not only altering the rest of the series, but the entire future of the Celtics organization.
Following a spirited Game 5 win, the Celtics traveled back to New York, and they even visited with Tatum when they got there. “It was really good seeing him,” said Payton Pritchard.
But a few hours later, everything came crashing down. Threes weren’t falling, the Knicks dominated the offensive glass, and any sort of offensive flow the Celtics found in Game 5 had evaporated into thin air.
By the time the final buzzer sounded, it was a 119-81 victory for the Knicks—their largest in franchise playoff history. As the streets surrounding Madison Square Garden rioted with excitement, the Celtics walked off the court with a new label.
The ‘champion’ tag will stick forever, but the defense is over. “We were trying to do something special, go back-to-back,” said Jaylen Brown. “We had a great group. We played well all year. So, I think this probably stings even more.”
A failure.
“We didn't reach our goal, obviously. So, the Celtic standard, we didn't live up to it. That's the hard truth. That's what that is,” said Horford. “There were some positive moments throughout the season, but that standard that we seek, we did not meet.”
The sting of Knicks series will linger with Celtics
Nothing comes easy in the NBA. Few things come easy in life. Losing at the highest level always takes a toll, but to burn out in the manner that the Celtics did in Game 6 stretches that feeling to another level.
“It stings,” said Brown. “As it should. Anytime losing stings, especially finishing the season like this. But it just wasn't our year.”
“I think the part that stings the most is just like, there's a lot of what-ifs,” said Sam Hauser. “Especially in this last series. Felt like we maybe gave a couple away. You wish you could just go back and make one more play for the team, or get one more stop, or make one more shot, hoping for a different result than what happened.”
MSG got to enjoy a three-quarter-long party, all at the expense of the Celtics. ‘F*** you, Boston’ and ‘Knicks in six’ chants filled the air.
By the end of the game, the crowd was screaming for Tom Thibodeau to put PJ Tucker and Tyler Kolek in the game—this group’s equivalent of TD Garden yelling at Brad Stevens to play Tacko Fall, or for Joe Mazzulla to let Blake Griffin get some run.
There are no kind words to say about the way Boston’s season ended.
“Last night, we didn't play with the level that we needed to play,” said Horford. “We're not going to blame it on fatigue or anything. We just weren't good enough last night. We didn't have it together, and it's disappointing because we let that slip away.
“We let the city down, the Celtics down, by coming out and not being able to get it done.”
It was a complete and utter disaster, in every sense of the word. “It was a lost opportunity because we lost,” said Holiday. “Again, I think that we have the best team in the league. Obviously, doing it last year, but the chemistry that we had, that we built from last season, even coming into this season or coming to this postseason, and how we were feeling, I feel like we are disappointed in ourselves. Feel like we let the organization down and the city down.”
“Losing to the Knicks feels like death, but I was always taught that there's life after death, so we'll get ready for whatever's next,” said Brown. “Whatever's next in the journey, I'll be ready for.”
That, ‘the journey’ Brown mentioned, is perhaps the most agonizing part.
“It sucks,” Derrick White said. “We'll never get this season back. We're never gonna have the exact same team again. Obviously, there were some highs and, obviously, some lows of the season, and at the moment, just kind of down.”
For as ready as the Celtics may be, or may believe themselves to be, nothing can adequately prepare them for the future.
Teams almost never get to stick together
With the current state of Boston’s payroll and the looming CBA restrictions, their roster may look completely different next season. Tatum’s long road to recovery will impact the decision-making process as well.
It was a special privilege for this Celtics group to remain intact after their title last season. A privilege that most recent champions didn’t have. The Denver Nuggets lost Bruce Brown. The Golden State Warriors lost Gary Payton II. The Milwaukee Bucks lost PJ Tucker.
And even in the years following their failed title defenses, the pieces continued to crumble. Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Klay Thompson, and Khris Middleton all casualties of the vicious quest to get back to the NBA’s mountaintop.
“Welcome to the life of a professional athlete,” Jrue Holiday said of processing the uncertainty. “I think sometimes you just got to do it. Other people do it in different ways. Again, I think the things that I can control, I do my best to control, but other than that, I try my best not to worry about it.
“So for me, offseason, have a little bit of a break, getting back right, and preparing for next season is all that I can really do. Who comes back, roster change, things like that, tt's not really my control, so I just focus on what I can.”
All those moves, from the Middletons to the Thompsons to the Holidays, who was another victim of a team’s desperate attempt to achieve its ultimate goal, require a lack of emotion. In a way, GMs can’t have emotions. Logic must reign supreme.
As soon as a front office begins acting with emotions over logic and what’s best for the success of the team, they are putting that success in jeopardy. It’s not their job to be emotional.
But emotions exist. Perspective exists. And for this Celtics group, nothing is more important than that in this very moment.
“I think you have to have perspective,” said Mazzulla. “At the end of the day, we set a goal, and we didn't achieve that goal. But it shouldn't take away, for me, from the mindset and effort that the players put in.
“We have a responsibility and ownership. We didn't do it, but the approach, the process to it, you can't ask for any more from the guys. Thought they gave everything they had throughout the season. Obviously, we didn't achieve that. But you can't take away from what they did.”
Losing is the norm, and winning is impossible
Winning at the highest level almost always means losing at the highest level, too. For every 2024 NBA Championship, there is a Game 7 disaster against the Miami Heat in 2023.
“This is the price you pay for trying to go after something,” said Mazzulla. “That's how it goes. Really just thankful to the guys, for who they are as people and what they've done as players, and what they've done as a team.”
But, in reality, the scale tips much further than that. The 2024 title isn’t balanced out by 2023 vs. Miami. Because there’s also 2022 against the Golden State Warriors. There’s the lost 2021 season. There’s 2020 against the Heat in The Bubble.
And it’s not a story exclusive to the Celtics.
The Nuggets. A second-round exit at the hands of the Minnesota Timberwolves in 2024. A championship in 2023. An injury-plagued early exit in 2022. Getting swept by the Phoenix Suns in 2022. Two seven-game classics just to get their hearts torn out by the Los Angeles Lakers in five games in the conference finals in 2020.
The Bucks. An unsightly first-round exit in 2024, losing to the Indiana Pacers. A nearly identical fate in 2023. The Jimmy Butler-led Heat upset in 2022. A championship in 2021. The Bubble loss to the Heat in five games.
Stephen Curry’s Warriors, widely regarded as one of the greatest teams in the history of basketball, had far more failures than successes. A second-round exit in 2024. A Play-In loss in 2023. Another second-round defeat in 2023. A championship in 2022. Two straight years of missing the playoffs in 2021 and 2020. And despite their three championships in four years prior to that, they still endured the soul-crushing loss in the 2016 NBA Finals and two seasons of playoff exits prior to their 2015 ring.
In the NBA, losing is normal. Winning is hard.
“If you're gonna be coaching for a long time, you're gonna have a lot more heartbreaks than you are joyful moments, if you look at the perspective,” said Mazzulla. “That's just how it goes. When you step into the arena and you go after something, that's how it goes. It has nothing to do with the weight of it or anything. Most coaches, the ratio of heartbreak to success, at the end of the year, you'll probably have more of those.
“If you’re going to be in it for a long time, you can’t expect it to go your way, you can’t expect it to go the way you want it all the time. That’s just part of it, and you have to be able to expect both of those things. That’s the arena.”
Even the most renowned dynasties lost more than they won.
“I look at it like the Spurs, right?” said Pritchard “You consider them having a dynasty. They never went back-to-back, but since they never went back-to-back, are all those years that they didn't win a failure? Or did those years help them win the next championship?
“So, like I said, it's about attacking the next year, and the year after that, and never giving up on trying to achieve being on top of the mountain again. So, like I said, I'll attack this summer, personally, and our team will get better, and we'll put ourselves in a position to compete for another one.”
The Celtics put the right things into winning
This year’s Celtics were the same. But nothing about this season was the same. Not from the viewpoint of their abilities or willingness to put everything they had toward winning, but simply from the context of, nothing can ever be truly the same.
There are no exact season replicas. Teams that manage to win multiple championships, especially in back-to-back seasons, do it in spite of all the outlying factors. Perseverance is attained through resilience, relentlessness, and a sprinkle of luck.
“I didn't see anything different. I saw something better,” Mazzulla said, comparing this year’s team to the 2024 Champions. “I saw, throughout the season, our guys had the right mindset and the right process towards going after it. Obviously, it's not going to go the way you want it to [every time]. Just ran into a great team in the second round, and it got the best of us.
“But like I said, to me, it's more about the mindset and the process that the guys had throughout the season. I thought they gave everything they had. I thought they really went after it, trying to achieve something that obviously is really difficult. I thought they went after that, and when you go after something, that's the price you pay.”
And just like reaching the peak of the NBA world grants all the necessary experience to repeat that success, losing is a harsh reminder of how impossible it can be to get there.
“There's something about even being able to experience last year for what it was, and with every season that, the amount of success that I had or didn't have, I feel like, ultimately, you kind of look back at your team and you know how kind of fickle everything can kind of be,” said Luke Kornet.
“And to have been able to win [at that level], we know how well things went and how well we played, and then, to fall short, you kind of have the humility of competition and knowing that a lot of things have to go right, and you have to play good basketball.”
The Celtics aren’t over. One loss doesn’t define the organization, nor does it define the players on the court who failed to meet their goals.
The Celtics are ready for what's next
Since losing is the norm and winning often seems impossible, the high of a championship should outweigh the low of a second-round loss. But the dichotomy of going from the top of the world to the bottom, especially in the manner that unfolded in Game 6 (and the Knicks series in general), carries a certain weight.
Next year brings the unknown. The future always does. And in this specific instance, the heightened likelihood of change forces uncertainty to the forefront of conversations.
“I think we still have a really, really great opportunity and a great window to be successful and win a championship again,” said Holiday. “I think the talent that we have on this team, not only on the court, but the coaching staff all the way up to Brad, has been amazing. So, yeah, the opportunity to win is now, and I still want to be part of that.”
For the moment, the heartache will linger. In a series the Celtics were heavily favored in, one in which all the history said they should win, they were met with a hideous demise. All at the fault of nothing but themselves.
Now, everything from the CBA to Tatum’s injury looks poised to rip apart the very fabric that has made this group special.
But if there is hope on the horizon to be had, the Celtics will reach out and grab it.
“There's a lot to be excited for,” said Brown. “This journey is not the end. It's not the end for me. I'm looking forward to coming back stronger. So, you just take this with your chin up. I know, Boston, it looks gloomy right now, obviously, with JT being out, and us kind of ending the year, but there's a lot to look forward to, and the city can feel excited about that. This is not the end. So, I'm looking forward to what's next.”