BOSTON — The Boston Celtics began their season with three straight losses. Six months later, against the same Philadelphia 76ers they faced on Opening Night, their season ended with three straight losses in a historic fall from grace at TD Garden.
“We knew it was going to be a fight, and we didn’t expect nothing less,” Jaylen Brown said.
Until Saturday night’s 109-100 Game 7 loss, the Celtics had never lost a playoff series after leading 3-1. They had never failed to advance after multiple 30-point
victories in a series, nor had they been eliminated by the Sixers in 44 years. For the first time — in both franchise and NBA history — the Celtics had three starters finish scoreless in a playoff game, since starters were first tracked in the 1970–71 season.
Operating in the absence of Jayson Tatum, who was ruled out by the team’s medical staff less than two hours before opening tip, Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla was forced to get creative. So, he inserted Baylor Scheierman, Luka Garza, and Ron Harper Jr. into the starting lineup alongside Brown and Derrick White, allowing the trio to make their first-career postseason starts on short notice.
None of them scored.
The Sixers began the do-or-die battle on a 9-0 run, magnifying the importance of scoring production. Scheierman had two wide-open looks from the corner, Garza misfired twice from the top of the key, and Harper came up empty on his lone attempt as the trio combined to go 0-for-7 from the field. It was clear early on that rolling the dice on a lineup featuring five players who hadn’t played together during the regular season was a gamble unlikely to pay off.
During the final seconds of regulation, as the Celtics hurled desperation shots, fans turned their backs and raced for the nearest exit. To Mazzulla, the feeling was no different than any other he’s experienced this time of year since becoming Boston’s coach four years ago.
“There’s a duality to everything,” Mazzulla said. “The year we won, I felt just as empty as we did when we lost.”
The Celtics spent the final five minutes of their season shooting an abysmal 1-of-12 from the field, including a stretch in which they missed 10 consecutive shot attempts. In the last 2:22, they had their best chance to take their first lead since midway through the second quarter. Trailing the Sixers, 99-98, Brown found Payton Pritchard wide open in the corner, but he missed. Instantly, the thousands of hands raised in anticipation came back down with an elongated sigh.
It was at that moment that everyone in the building accepted reality.
Boston caved, and it wasn’t as simple as Philadelphia being the superior team. Everything that went wrong could be traced back to the Celtics and their failures. They had three chances to close out the Sixers, and instead delivered their most uncharacteristic three-game tumble at the most important point of their season. They weren’t just bad — they lacked energy, urgency, and discipline, the very traits they spent 82 regular-season games building for moments like this, only to crumble in humiliating fashion.
They desecrated the last 79 years of Celtics basketball and the standards set by generations of legends who paved the way for them. It wasn’t a learning lesson. It was a painful look in the mirror. The consequence of taking your foot off the gas and expecting everything to somehow work out is an undeserved arrogance that caught up to Boston in the most brutal way.
It’s a feeling of embarrassment nobody in a Celtics uniform has ever experienced before.
Those who stuck around to watch Joel Embiid and Tyrese Maxey embrace the final moments of their historic comeback were left in utter disbelief. Even after the final buzzer sounded and Embiid and Maxey remained on the court for their walk-off interview, silence overtook the building. You could hear the sound of a pin drop from the rafters, no matter where you stood, as Boston’s greatest nightmare — briefly dismissed in Game 5 — came to life.
“It’s disappointing,” Pritchard said. “Very disappointing to be up 3-1 and then end up losing the series, but definitely motivation going into the offseason to get better and to come back stronger.”
That same feeling that spread across TD Garden’s concourse and poured onto Causeway Street also disseminated to the Celtics locker room.
“It’s emotional,” Pritchard said of the locker room’s mood. “You know, you pour your heart out into this, and to lose like that is tough. But everybody in here is your brother; you love them, and everybody did what they were supposed to do.”
Boston shot 39.8 percent from the field and 26.5 percent from three, knocking down only 13 of 49 attempts. They didn’t deserve to advance. The instances in which the Celtics showed life — or any resemblance to the group that won 56 games in the regular season, became the league’s third team to clinch a playoff berth, and shifted their narrative from underdogs to an Eastern Conference threat — were few and far between.
Quickly, as the series progressed, the Celtics became unrecognizable. Their lack of depth meant that aside from Tatum and Brown, Philadelphia didn’t need to account for anybody else. Pritchard scored 32 points in Game 4, and White sparked a brief revival with 26 points in Game 7, but that was about it. Neither of them produced consistently, much less enough to give the Sixers the same problems Maxey and Edgecombe were causing the Celtics throughout the series.
White shot 15-of-55 from three, becoming a liability and doing more harm than good. Mazzulla and the Celtics stuck with him, hoping he’d turn a corner after he scored six points on 2-of-5 shooting in Game 4. He instead totaled 17 points across Games 5 and 6 while struggling on the other end of the floor when guarding Maxey.
Whether wide open from three or with space six feet from the rim (twice) in the first quarter of Game 6, White couldn’t get going.
“Obviously, there’s a lot to be proud of,” White said, reflecting on the year. “I’ll definitely remember a lot of the great times that we had, but we also remember the bad times and this moment right here. It’s gonna be a long summer, and I gotta get better.”
He owned up to his shortcomings and vowed to do his part this upcoming offseason.
“I gotta go to the gym this summer and come back better,” White emphasized.
The Celtics had every opportunity to avoid this fate. They’ve made those slow walks back to the locker room while the opposing team celebrated behind them on the court. They’ve stood at the podium, reflecting on what could have been done differently while digesting the weight of elimination. But this one feels different. In the past, they could point to inexperience or roster flaws. This time, they had experience of winning a title, the hunger, and a roster prepared for the postseason — one instilled with principles that made Boston the harder team to beat most nights throughout its campaign.
It can be said that the Celtics overachieved, but that doesn’t exonerate a first-round exit — certainly not after taking a 3-1 lead.
Falling to the Sixers in seven after taking three of the first four adds a stain to Boston’s history that will linger and force the front office into action. The Celtics exposed themselves in more ways than one, warranting a return to the drawing board for president of basketball operations Brad Stevens.
While Mazzulla frequently praised the work this group put in throughout the season, it wasn’t enough — not for a franchise that measures itself against championship standards and the pride embedded in its uniform and history.
The demand is what it’s always been, and that isn’t going to change.
“When you don’t win a championship for the Celtics, there’s always going to be a level of ‘We have to do better,’” Mazzulla said. “But at the same time, regardless of what was going on, we came in with that type of mentality. I thought that we came in with a championship mentality from the beginning of the year, and I thought the guys just put their head down and went to work. And I’m grateful that I got to coach them.”
Enduring the franchise’s greatest collapse may ultimately fuel the next step in repairing that standard.
