Despite returning virtually the entire roster from the team that won the 2024 NBA championship in impressive fashion, coach Joe Mazzulla’s squad was unable to become the first team since the Golden State Warriors in 2017-18 to repeat as champions.
Instead, the Celtics were eliminated from the playoffs in an ugly 119-81 loss to the New York Knicks in Game 6 of their Eastern Conference semifinal series Friday night at Madison Square Garden. The Knicks now advance to the Eastern Conference Finals for the first time since 1999, where they’ll take on a rested Indiana Pacers team.
‘It Wasn’t Our Year’
“It just wasn’t our year.” Celtics All-Star Jaylen Brown told reporters after the game.
The upcoming Eastern Conference Finals, which begin Tuesday night at 8 p.m., will be the first in the last three years not to involve the Celtics. In fact, Boston had advanced to six of the last eight conference finals.
“It sucks,” Celtics guard Derrick White said of his team’s early exit from the playoffs. “You’ll never get this season back. You’re never going to have the exact same team again. So obviously there were some highs and obviously some lows of the season, but at the moment it’s just kind of down.”
For the first time in the last three seasons, the Celtics won’t be a part of the Eastern Conference Finals.
Who Did What?
As for its Game 6 loss, Boston fell behind early and was outscored in all four quarters, at one point trailing by as many as 41 points. Brown, coming off a heroic Game 5 performance to help extend his team’s season, led Boston with 20 points, six rebounds, and six assists, but fouled out of the game in the third quarter.
White, who had posted a season-saving 34 points in Game 5, was unable to relive that magic Friday night, finishing with just eight points, two assists, and one rebound. Payton Pritchard (11 points) and Al Horford (10 points) were the only Celtics other than Brown to also score in double figures.
New York, on the other hand, seemingly couldn’t miss. Jalen Brunson and OG Anunoby each scored 23, while Mikal Bridges (22 points), Karl-Anthony Towns (21 points), Josh. Hart (10 points), and Miles McBride (10 points) also played well to the delight of Knicks fans.
End Of My Celtics Rant
Boston now faces a precarious offseason in which the team will be forced to address salary cap limitations, as well as a change in ownership, that will undoubtedly have implications on its roster. Not to mention the Celtics will likely be without six-time All-Star Jayson Tatum — as he recovers from surgery to repair a right Achilles tear — for most of, if not all, the 2025-26 season.
“I told the guys in the locker room, one of the honors of my life was to be able to coach this group of guys,” Mazzulla said after Game 6. “So you go down the list, every one of these guys is a champion, a warrior, and they’ve done a lot of great things in this league, and it’s an honor to be able to share the locker room with them, and be next to them on the court and be in the arena with them. They came in, we had a legit shot at it, and they gave everything they had to try to go, but we ran into a better team.”
