The Boston Celtics were on top of the world two nights ago. Derrick White’s buzzer-beating tip tied the Eastern Conference Finals at three games apiece, giving the Celtics a chance to make history as the first team in NBA history to trail 3-0 in the postseason overcame. This would have been a remarkable achievement, but it would have obscured the serious disappointment of falling behind a No. 8 seeded 3-0 in the first place.
That’s a nasty habit the Celtics have developed over the years. They tend to downplay their opponent. They needed six games to beat the disappointing Hawks in the first round and then immediately lost the first game of the second round to a Philadelphia 76ers team that lacked James Harden. They even let their guard down during individual games. That miracle from Derrick White on Saturday? It was preceded by the Celtics who had a double-digit lead with less than five minutes to play. The same thing happened in Game 7 of last year’s Eastern Conference Finals. Boston led by 13 with 3:35 left, but ultimately needed Jimmy Butler to miss a game-winning 3-pointer to escape humiliation.
The Celtics are so talented that they often get away with these shenanigans… until they meet an opponent who can punish them for it. That was Stephen Curry a year ago. Sunday it was the heat. When things go well, the Celtics are unbeatable. When another team punches them in the mouth? Not so much. Boston finished the postseason 1–5 in games decided by seven points or fewer, with White’s putback representing the lone win. It would be easy to write off losing Game 7 due to Jayson Tatum’s ankle injury, but it’s not like Boston was one healthy superstar away from winning this game.
Jaylen Brown would become Boston’s second star. He failed to show up in Game 7, shooting just 8-of-23 from the field and 1-of-9 from deep while turning the ball himself over as many times (eight) as the Heat did as a team. Those same turnovers nearly killed Boston against Miami a year ago, and it’s worth revisiting the idea that Brown and Tatum have overlapping skills that are best displayed when they play on separate teams. You can never have too many wings in the NBA, but committing to those two has left Boston lean in other crucial areas.
Notably, the Celtics lack the kind of primary ball-handler who can control the flow of a game and dictate the pace. That often causes them to be sluggish in their attack, leading them into late clock turnovers. Brown is not only responsible for that weakness, but he also doesn’t help matters with his disappointing ball handling. His athleticism and spot-up shooting are his best assets. Those are skills best maximized on a team with a traditional point guard.
Keeping Tatum and Brown together has been a no-brainer for most of their careers. It becomes harder to justify now that the new collective bargaining agreement imposes such harsh penalties on big money lenders. Both Tatum and Brown earned All-NBA honors this season and are therefore eligible to earn supermax money on their next deals. Boston finished about $25 million above the luxury tax mark this season, and that was with Tatum and Brown both earning below market value. Once the new CBA kicks in, the second platform will begin penalizing teams that finish $17.5 million or more over the tax limit.
Those restrictions are downright draconian. Such teams cannot take advantage of the taxpayer’s mid-level exception. They cannot sign players after buyouts. Seven years later, they can’t trade draft picks. Heck, they can’t even add up salaries in transactions anymore. Finish above that second platform and a team is almost locked into its existing roster. Do the Celtics have a roster they are comfortable with? Will they still have one if Brown and Tatum’s combined salaries force them to excise taxes on several key players?
At this point, it’s hard to believe that the answer to both questions is “yes.” The Brown-Tatum duo is what makes the Celtics great, but there’s no obvious way to fix what’s wrong in Boston without breaking them up. The simplest alternative, for now, would be to find a new coach.
History says there’s almost no chance of the Celtics actually firing Joe Mazzulla. Only 22 new head coaches have ever been fired after their first year at the helm, aside from Ime Udoka, who left the Celtics under other circumstances. All 22 of them had records under .500 in their debut campaigns, except for Jack McKinney, who coached just 14 games for the Lakers from 1979-1980 before a cycling accident ended his season. Mazzulla made it to the Eastern Conference Finals.
Of course he had a squad that made it to the final a year ago, so it’s unclear how much credit he deserves for that performance. What we can say for sure is that Boston lost the defensive identity that made it so special a year ago. Several Celtics talked about that reality after Game 7, with Marcus Smart calling their defense “our kryptonite” and Malcolm Brogdon to argue that you don’t “win championships with better offense than defense.” Boston had much of the same roster as last year this season, but what Udoka built up a season ago seems to be gone.
Mazzulla’s reluctance to call timeouts is well documented. He didn’t return to the larger starting lineup that helped Boston to the Finals a season ago until Game 6 of the second round this season, when the Celtics were one game away from elimination. Their offense became completely too dependent on 3-pointers, with Miami combining to make 18 more 3-pointers than Boston in its four wins. The decision to play an obviously injured Brogdon in Game 7 made little sense, and the Celtics lost his seven minutes by 15 points.
These would be flammable fouls for a more experienced coach. Mazzulla could make it plausible that he was thrown onto the track with little preparation time and an undermanned technical staff. Perhaps Boston will bolster his bench with an experienced assistant or two this offseason and give him one more season to prove himself.
But once Brown and Mazzulla are both back, Boston suddenly has far fewer options for big changes. The Celtics will have their full complement of first-round picks available once the June draft wraps up, and the Celtics have some medium-sized salaries (Brogdon, White, Smart, Al Horford and Robert Williams III) to dangle for upgrades like they choose it that way. But trading a few of those players for a single star-level point guard would raise the second apron concerns we discussed earlier, and there’s no obvious point guard upgrade available in the market, even if Boston tempt the tax gods.
Chris Paul would be a great addition if his partially guaranteed deal was waived, but the Celtics (or pretty much any other team, really) would have a hard time justifying a $30 million salary for him at this stage of his career . . Boston could potentially try to bring back Terry Rozier if the Hornets place Scoot Henderson at No. 2 overall, but he didn’t exactly leave on the best of terms in 2019. They’re too far above the first platform to realistically make a Fred VanVleet sign- and-trade operates under the hard cap restrictions of the first platform. Final-caliber ball handling is exceedingly rare.
The Celtics hoped that offensively, Brogdon could be that stabilizing force. Injuries prevented it in this series, but injuries are normal for the Brogdon course. Smart was the point guard presiding over most of these playoff issues, and is best suited for an off-the-ball role. He is also the vocal leader of a team that has been overworked by the Heat in back-to-back postseasons. A year ago, he called himself the “heart and soul” of the team. Heart and soul are two things the Celtics haven’t exactly had in abundance during these playoff collapses.
Those things are impossible to quantify and they are weaknesses that teams go to great lengths to ignore. On paper, the Celtics are a team built around two relatively young All-Stars who made the Finals a year ago and fell one win short this season. Plenty of teams would trade with them in a heartbeat. But they keep losing in the same avoidable ways over and over again. At some point, the Celtics will have to look inward and accept that there’s something about this mix of players and coaches that doesn’t work when it matters most.
Accepting that would have been easier if the heat had just swept the Celtics and left no room for discussion. But inertia drives most of the decision-making in the NBA. Teams don’t like big changes. They rarely want to admit they are wrong. But the Celtics have had the best roster in the NBA two years in a row and haven’t won it all. They’ve lost as the higher seed in five of the past seven post-seasons, almost dropping to No. 8 seeds twice before finally doing so this time. They rarely correct their mistakes and face a collective bargaining agreement designed to make their lives more difficult. Something has to change in Boston if the Celtics are to overcome all this. It could be the players. It could be the trainer. But it must be something.