The contest between the Boston Celtics and Oklahoma City Thunder last night was one of the best games of the 2025-26 season. Even with both teams undermanned, it was bound to be epic to see the two most recent NBA Champions go head to head with one another.
The only problem was how it ended: free throws. Both the Celtics and the Thunder played the game's very last play ingeniously: the Thunder didn't call timeout to prevent the Celtics from subbing in a big man to cover Chet Holmgren on the board while the Celtics did everything in their power to force the ball out of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander's hands and made Alex Caruso take the last shot.
It's just a shame that what decided the game was clutch free throws.
The refs charged this foul on Chet Holmgren with 0.8 sec on the clock 👀
— Rango (@Rango_deep) March 13, 2026
pic.twitter.com/5FMBbv8JLS
Making it harder is that the NBA's Last Two-Minute Report confirmed that it was the right call.
L2M Report:
— Clemente Almanza (@CAlmanza1007) March 13, 2026
There were no mistakes in the Thunder’s 104-102 win over the Celtics. Here’s the explanation for why Chet Holmgren’s free throws were the correct call: pic.twitter.com/U1mRg3z7JV
No one's arguing against the call itself, ensuring a bittersweet moral victory for Boston, but it's just painful to see an epic game be decided on something like that. It made such an epic game end on an anticlimactic note.
Yes, the Celtics' late-game struggles are becoming a concerning trend, but we've seen plenty of contact in the closing seconds of games that goes uncalled. The Thunder definitely earned their victory, as they're the reigning champions who stood their ground against one of the NBA's best teams.
It's not that they beat the Celtics that feels wrong. It's how they did it.
It would have been a problem if Boston had won that way too
Let the record show that this isn't about the Celtics losing. If they had won because of a last-second foul call that led to free throws that clinched the game instead of the Thunder, it would still rub quite a few people the wrong way.
Contact happens at the end of games, and more often than not, it goes uncalled because watching games be decided by free throws makes the game hard to watch, especially in crunchtime.
This was a fantastic game between not only two of the NBA's best teams but also two of the well-run organizations in the sport. It would have been better if both teams had been fully healthy, but it was still a battle of wits where both teams did everything to stop the other.
This game deserved to be decided by something else besides last second free throws. It may not have been the wrong ruling, and it's not surprising that the Thunder beat the Celtics without Jayson Tatum, but the Celtics at least earned a better outcome.