It can end so fast
- May 3
- 4 min read
Sunday 5/3/26
A disappointing end to the Celtics' season last night, losing to the Sixers, a play-in team that the Celtics had a 3-1 series lead over. You knew the loss was most likely coming after Game 6. Tatum didn't play, and I thought that may have been a good thing for the Celtics, but alas, it didn't matter.
I can now say definitively that the Celtics have gone as far as they're going to--there won't be a second championship--in the Tatum-Brown era and it's time for a redesign. I'd move one of them.
The Celtics, thus configured to these two star players, are a regular season team. I saw where someone compared Joe Mazzulla to Mike Timlin. It isn't a perfect comparison, but there's some sense in it. Mazzulla doesn't have answers, he's not an adjuster. Stagnation and the over-reliance on the three-ball hurts the Celtics.
49 more three-point attempts by the C's last night--16 alone by the cold Derrick White. Maybe try playing the game the right way?
Joel Emiid was their biggest problem as the series wore on and the Celtics had no way of combating him. That's a tall order for any team, regardless of their bigs, when Emiid is healthy, but he pretty much was able to do what he wanted to, when he wanted to.
I was also disappointed--but not surprised--to hear Brown complain about the officiating and fouls and flopping after the game. As is usual with him, this is done in a broad sense as well, as a sort of state-of-the-league commentary, and one on morality, too, after a fashion. Playing the game the right way and honor, etc.
I'm not suggesting he doesn't have a point to a degree, but I don't think this helps him deal with anything or be successful in what is still a merit-based endeavor. He doesn't know what he doesn't know about how it could be for him elsewhere. It wears thin, and there's also a time and place.
He also said this was his favorite season, and, again, I don't believe you say that kind of thing here after you failed so enormously. I understand that the Sixers are a better team than their regular season record indicated, and a dangerous team--maybe they come out of the East--and the team they sent out there in the second half of the series may be more like a two-seed than this Celtics' team was--but, again, you just blew a 3-1 lead to what was technically a play-in team.
That's bad no matter who they got back and how they found their stride. It can't happen, and it just did. Not the time to talk about your love of the season that just came crashing apart. And let's be honest--that love has to do with how that season went for Jaylen Brown personally. He got to be the guy, was in MVP conversation, all that.
There's a lot of ignominy on the resume for the Tatum-Brown Celtics, though. An awful lot.
Speaking of state-of-the-league remarks: more teams can beat more teams than maybe ever before in the NBA now. I don't want to call this parity; that term, to me, can be suggestive of mediocrity. The first seed in the East could also be eliminated tonight in a Game 7, although after having managed to extend the series to its maximum length, you're inclined to think the Pistons won't lose at home. But it wouldn't be surprising, would it?
More teams are threats, and you're seeing the NBA become a bit more like the NHL. That is, in hockey, the playoffs are like a different sport. A team that isn't some world beater of a regular season team can be just that in the playoffs. The game changes that much. What works in the regular season might not do much, if anything, for you in the playoffs. Which is why it's so hard to predict outcomes, especially at the outset of the NHL playoffs. I don't much bother.
Same idea is holding court--I feel like we've been on the verge of a couple puns here--in the NBA. That can be cool if your team is one of those upstarts and this plays to their advantage, or it can be not so fun if your team gets upended as a result. My team did and I had thought we were going to have Celtics playoff basketball for a while. It can end so fast, right? Not just a sports thing--as if one needed another reminder.
(NB: When we say "end so fast," why do we always mean with good things? We don't say this with the bad. That there's likely good reason for this isn't itself so good.)
Then we have the Bruins bowing out at home in the playoffs--a rite of spring in Boston sans Stravinsky. Three games on Garden ice, three losses. Now that's Bruins hockey. True to their generational DNA. The Buffalo-in-six prediction I made before the series is one I actually got right. You never know how it's going to go, but I do know these Bruins. I know Charlie McAvoy, who was a -3 in that close-out game.
By NHL standards, Charlie McAvoy isn't a good hockey player. As I've said repeatedly, he's a third-pairing type of defenseman. And he's lethal to your cause in the playoffs. You're better off without him playing if it's the postseason, because he's going to hurt you and keep hurting you.
But there you have Bruins fans after the series talking about what a warrior he is. In the parasocial world, and in a world where people know so little, and rarely have a clue what they're even seeing--to say nothing of a world in which true expertise is virtually nonexistent--this is how it goes. Grown adults making it sound as though they're six-years-old and talking about their big, strong daddy.
It's disturbing. And also frightfully ignorant, of course. He needs to go. Good things won't happen for you while he's on the roster playing twenty-five minutes a game in big spots. He also lost his mind in this game. The Bruins brass, at least, did one thing right in not making this player the captain. And contrary to what Bruins fans said after the game, it shouldn't be Pastrnak either. Your captain can't be a floater, stat hunter, and turnover machine. I'd like to think this should be obvious, but I know better.
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