I’m walking around the streets of Seaport on a sunny Monday afternoon. I had just watched one of my good friends walk the stage at Northeastern commencement, and he and a few buddies of ours are on our way to feast on some celebratory tacos.
The sound of our laughter and banter quickly quiets in my ears as I’m suddenly distracted by a tall figure emerging from the buildings to my right. I experience a moment of shock before I recognize him as Baylor Scheierman, the Boston Celtics’ second-year guard.
I stop him, ask him to take a selfie, which he kindly does so, wish him luck in the rest of the playoffs and we go our separate ways.
In that moment in time, the Celtics were up three games to one against the Philadelphia 76ers in the first round of the NBA Playoffs and the next day they would have a chance to close out the series and advance to the next round.
They did not do that.
Instead, the Celtics lost three straight games and blew their lead to the Sixers, ending their playoff run. Coincidence? Sounds like a reach, I know. But just like a lucky jersey you forgot to wear while watching the game because you were busy mowing the lawn and forgot the game was at 1 p.m. instead of 7:30, I bet most Celtics fans would also look to blame any small moment for Boston’s blown series lead.
To some — more sane — Celtics fans, it was surprising. Jayson Tatum returned to the team early from his Achilles injury, Jaylen Brown was putting up MVP numbers and Boston clinched the No. 2 seed in the playoffs. But if you know me and my outlook on the season, I believed it was an important test and time to experiment for the Celtics, and they wouldn’t finish any higher than the eighth seed, getting bounced in the first round.
Then, I was filled with false hope. Since everyone was healthy and the odds were in the Celtics’ favor to have a decent shot at the championship, I believed in Boston.
It looked like the Celtics were going to easily survive their first-round series against Philly, especially after winning Game 4 128-96. And then everything imploded.
In Game 5, the Celtics had a 13-point lead and lost by 16, as Sixers’ center Joel Embiid dropped 33 points and the Cs only shot 28% from three. Game 6 Tyrese Maxey dropped 30, and the Celtics only shot 29% from three. No Boston player scored over 18 points, and the Sixers led by as many as 23.
Game 7 featured a close contest at times, but it looked like Philadelphia was in control the whole game, with Boston only leading for a minute in the second quarter. The last four minutes of play, with the Sixers leading 99-98, showed the most underwhelming and frustrating performance from the Celtics all season. They only managed to score two points and could not capitalize on their opportunities.
But what did we as Celtics fans really expect? The roster was shifted around compared to last season. Tatum was expected — at the time — to miss all of the 2025-26 season, and I felt it to be a year where the Celtics and Joe Mazzulla could experiment with the young core. Boston didn’t need a championship this season; they just performed really well given their situation and proved their coaching, emerging stars and rotation could still compete without a top-five5 player in the NBA.
And then fans — including myself — got greedy.
Celtics TV analyst Brian Scalabrine made a head-turning statement in the postgame show in TD Garden after Game 7. He said, “One of the major flaws of this Celtics era, this group, is the arrogance that they think it’s going to be easy to win.”
Scalabrine claims the Sixers outplayed the Celtics for most of the series, and Boston blowing multiple double-digit leads multiple times is part of the arrogance that it’ll be easy for them to win. Sure, a team goes up 3-1 in the series and thinks it’ll be easy to close it out with three chances to win one game. But it’s not entirely arrogance, or even arrogance at all, that the Celtics couldn’t advance to the next round.
The Sixers played tough. Embiid returning midway through the series easily gave the Sixers a scoring threat. Philly’s veterans and young stars shone the brightest when it mattered most. The Celtics shot below 30% from three in every loss — the Sixers took away their entire offensive bread and butter, and the Celtics were 7-11 during the regular season when shooting below 30% from beyond the arc.
It’s easy to win when the team is made to win. This team was not ready to make an NBA Finals run.
One of the most blaring stats to me this season was the Celtics’ clutch time record. In games where the score was within five points of either team in the final five minutes of the fourth quarter or overtime, Boston won 16 of those games and lost 17, putting their win percentage in the bottom 12 of NBA teams.
The Celtics were tied for the fifth-least number of games played in the clutch, meaning they were winning games by a lot, which is why they had one of the highest point differentials in the NBA this season. In the close games that they did play, they won about half the time. In two clutch-time games this postseason, the Celtics followed the numbers and won one and lost the other. The problem lied, however, in trying to “shoot their way out of it.”
In those two close games, the Celtics shot 29% from the field and 25% from beyond the arc, a -16% and -10% differential from the regular season. Last postseason was even worse. The Celtics went 1-4 in clutch games and shot 22% from the field and just 7% from three in clutch time. In the 2024-25 regular season they had the best record in the NBA in clutch games, going 24-11.
This year’s team lacked experience and the “clutch factor” to close out games, and it’s no fault of their own; they just didn’t play much of them. An optimist would say that the young guys and new additions at least got a taste of playoff basketball in Boston and will no doubt be fueled to make a return next year.
No, I didn’t really curse the Boston Celtics. Truly this was the outcome I expected all along — it’s true, go read about it — even though I may have gotten too excited when the Celtics made the playoffs as a No. 2 seed — you don’t have to read this one.
So what did we gain from this season? We learned Mazzulla is a legit coach, the Celtics can only go up from here and that having low expectations is the key to life, because you can be rewarded greatly or let down easy… or run into Baylor Scheierman.
