The Celtics didn’t have it on Friday, but their series ended long before Friday’s disaster.
The Celtics didn’t have it on Friday, but their series ended long before Friday’s disaster.
The Celtics’ season ended in brutal fashion on Friday, as the Knicks stormed into the Eastern Conference finals with a 119-81 victory.
Here are the takeaways.The good times are over, at least for now.
Last season, after the Celtics blew out the Mavericks en route to a title, we wrote about how important it was that Celtics fans appreciate the good years, which were happening in real-time. The point, obviously, was that as good as the Celtics’ situation seemed, nothing great lasts forever.
On Friday – much sooner than anyone expected – the good times officially ended, at least for a while. Trailing 3-2 in a series and clinging to shreds of hope, the Celtics started cold and never got on track. The defense was nearly as bad as the offense – the Knicks got whatever they wanted against an NBA team that looked like it had absolutely nothing left in the tank both physically and emotionally.
We’ll get to the events of Friday’s game (if you want to read about them) in a minute, but there are three ways to look at the loss, all of which are perhaps equally valid.
First, you can look at the past – this Celtics team has been making deep playoff runs since Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown and Al Horford took them to the Eastern Conference Finals in 2018, when they came just one win from a trip to the Finals. They made the conference finals four more times and the Finals twice, and they won a title with various iterations of the same group, led by Tatum and Brown. History will shine very favorably on this Celtics group, and not just because banners hang forever. This was an elite team built around two players who joined the franchise at the age of 19 and grew into superstars en route to the franchise’s 18th championship. The good times were very good, and Friday’s events do nothing to detract from them.
The present, however, is a lot less cheery. Friday’s loss was as bad as it gets, especially on the heels of a Game 5 that showed a lot of grit and heart. Playing in front of a raucous Madison Square Garden crowd, the Knicks tore the Celtics apart and midway through the second quarter, the only people who seemed to have any doubt about the outcome of the game were New York-based NBA writers who somehow seemed to still believe in the Knicks’ ability to blow it.
