Injuries, illness, and choked leads: how the Celtics’ repeat bid fell short

NEW YORK — For the sixth consecutive NBA season, the defending champions have been eliminated in the second round of the playoffs (or prior). The 61-win Celtics seemed like great candidates to buck that trend — they were heavy favorites entering the series against the New York Knicks — but instead, they’ll continue that peculiar pattern.

The Celtics choked away two consecutive 20-point leads to start the series, lost their franchise cornerstone to a ruptured Achilles in Game 4, and trailed by as many as 41 points in the final game en route to their elimination.

And, though the signs of their looming demise were accumulating, at shootaround on Friday morning, players stressed just how much they wanted to stay alive.

“We don’t want our season to end,” said Payton Pritchard. “I think it’s nothing worse than having to go home, and sit at home, and not play basketball right now. So we’re gonna do everything we can to keep that alive.”

But the Jayson Tatum-less Celtics team that stepped onto the floor couldn’t compete for a second competitive game against a hungry Knicks squad that hasn’t been to the conference finals since 1999. In front of a raucous Madison Square Garden crowd, Boston fell by double-digits early, and only watched it balloon as the game continued.

“Extremely tough night for us,” said a disappointed Kristaps Porzingis in the locker room postgame. “It felt like nothing was going our way.”

The Celtics’ second-round exit marked a stunning turn of events few could have predicted. With the exception of five inconsistent weeks spanning from mid-December to mid-January, it was an exceptional regular season for a team fresh off a title. The Celtics had the league’s second-best defense and third-best offense. They finished with the NBA third-best record and third-best net rating — and seemed poised to make yet another deep run.

But, injuries began to mount in the second half of the season

Jaylen Brown began dealing with a right knee impingement that kept him out of 11 regular season games after the All-Star break. He played through the knee injury in the postseason, but clearly lacked the burst he typically has, as evidenced by his decision to lay-in shots when he’d normally dunk.

For the postseason, he averaged 22.1 points per game on 44.1% shooting, slight declines from his previous playoff production. Brown, who said he thought he was turning a corner with his health ahead of the second round, declined to share much about his status after the Celtics’ elimination.

“Nothing to talk about right now,” Brown said. “But we’ll kind of sit back and process and see what the next steps are.”

Then, there was Porzingis, who contracted an unknown illness in late February that kept him out of nearly three weeks of play. The Latvian center was “available” for the entirety of the playoffs, but struggled with his breathing and lingering fatigue, and looked like a shell of his healthy self on both ends of the floor.

In 11 postseason games, Porzingis averaged 7.7 points on 31.6% shooting, including 15.4% from three. That marked a massive decline from the 19.5 points on 48.3% shooting he averaged during the regular season. To make matter worse, he experienced a massive energy “crash” ahead of Game 1 against the Knicks that further exacerbated his on-court struggles.

“I always try to downplay it in my own mind that ‘I’m good, I’m good,’ but I don’t know,” Porzingis said after Game 6. “My system just is not perfect right now. It’s not working the way it should be. Many, many weird things. And it might be the best thing I need right now is just to rest, just get somewhere in the sun and just let my system kind of even itself up. But it definitely was a very, very frustrating time for me, and nothing much else to add, really. It’s going to be now for me at least some time to recover from this.”

Porzingis said he doesn’t know exactly what the illness is, but it effectively meant that the Celtics’ third-leading scorer and borderline All-Star talent was not able to contribute to winning for most of the playoffs.

“Even right now, I played 11 minutes, but I’m gassed right now,” he said. “I could just lay down over here and take a little nap, easy. It was just extremely weird, and many symptoms that were super weird. I think nobody has a clear answer. I’ll see how I go from here.”

Jrue Holiday, who joked earlier in the season that he was getting old, missed 19 games during the season due to a slew of injuries. He also missed three playoff games dealing with a right hamstring strain in the first round, though he was able to return in time to face the Knicks.

Sam Hauser, a major contributor in the Celtics’ 2024 championship, battled through a lower back injury for much of the season and then missed three of six games against the Knicks with a sprained right ankle.

The injuries made the Celtics’ path more challenging, but they don’t single-handedly explain why the Celtics fell to the Knicks in six games. The series loss can be traced to the beginning of the series, when the Celtics blew 20 20-point leads in both Games 1 and 2 at TD Garden, significantly reducing their margin of error the rest of the way.

“It almost feels worse [than previous eliminations],” Brown said. “We were trying to do something special — go back-to-back. We had a great group. We played well all year. So this probably stings even more.”

With the Cleveland Cavaliers and Oklahoma City Thunder both putting together historic regular seasons, there was always a question about whether the Celtics could go back-to-back.

But, a second-round exit seemed unlikely considering the team’s sustained success all year — and this core’s track record of Eastern Conference Finals appearances. Brown has been to the Eastern Conference Finals six times in his career, and to the Finals twice. Postgame, he reflected on the unfamiliar nature of having his season end this early.

“That’s obviously a psychological hurdle over the last, what, seven, eight years now?” Mazzulla said of defending champs losing in the second round. “So, [we’ll] spend time studying that this offseason.

No one will deny that the final outcome was disappointing.

“It sucks,” said Derrick White. “We’ll never get this season back. We’ll never have the same team again.”

The early exit was the result of back-to-back two fourth quarter collapses combined with a slew of injuries that made the adversity insurmountable.

It was the result of an excellent Knicks team with physical wings that never stopped fighting.

It was the result of a very good team simply not making enough winning plays.

“I didn’t see anything different,” Mazzulla said of this year’s Celtics team. “I saw something better throughout the season. Everybody had the right mindset and the right process towards going after it.”

Mazzulla also credited New York: “We just ran into a great team in the second round. They got the best of us.”

But, this wasn’t about a locker room in turmoil.

“A bunch of great, selfless guys, about winning, that put their bodies on the line, that came into work every day, that just added to the group,” Brown said. “No situations, no headaches, no turmoil or anything like that.”

The Celtics’ future is uncertain

Jayson Tatum could miss all of next season recovering from his Achilles tendon repair, and the Celtics very well could look to shed money to get below the second apron, meaning that players like Kristaps Porzingis and Jrue Holiday, among others, could be on the trade block. In addition, Al Horford and Luke Kornet — both key members of the current rotation — are free agents.

Through the uncertainty, Brown had a message to the fans at the podium after the Celtics’ defeat.

“I know Boston — it looks gloomy right now, obviously with JT being out, and us ending the year, but it’s a lot to look forward to,” Brown said. “I want the city to feel excited about that. This is not the end.”