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The defending champs - the Boston Celtics - are out, and our 25th team eliminated falling 2-4 to the Knicks.

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Time of death: May 16th, 2025
Record at elimination: 61-21 (6-5 in playoffs)
Head coach: Joe Mazzulla

https://www.spotrac.com/nba/boston-celtics/yearly
Contract summary:

Jaylen Brown – 4yr/235M remain
Tatum – 5yr/313M extension begins next season, final year 71M PO, (injured, Achilles)
Holiday – 3yr/103M remain, final year 37M PO
Porzingis – extension eligible, or 30M expiring
Horford – UFA
White – 4yr/120M remain, final year 34M PO
Pritchard – 3yr/21M remain
Sam Hauser – 4yr/45M remain
Kornet – UFA
Torrey Craig – UFA


Rookie Scale/minimums (varies on 2-4 years remaining):
Jordan Walsh – extension eligible, or 2yr remain (final year 2.4M TO)
Neemias Queta – 2yr/5M remain (w/ non-guaranteed conditions)
Xavier Tillman – 1yr/2.5M
Baylor Schierman – 3yr remain
JD Davison – 2.2M TO (GL-MVP)

TW
Miles Norris
Drew Peterson

Dead-cap – NONE this season, and in future.
Capspace – 2nd apron, and very limited options unless trading a core player to change roster

PICKS for 2025 draft:
BOS 1st
WAS 2nd

A SMALL SEASON REVIEW:
https://www.espn.com/nba/team/schedule/_/name/bos/seasontype/2

Coming off an impressive 2024 Title run, the Celtics entered the season very confident and continued to show that throughout the year. There was no point during the RS where I ever felt they were in danger of contention. The team had a pragmatic approach to rest and lineups playing a lot of the roster. With it’s 3-pt heavy style, some variance losses occurred which led to Boston’s No. 2 seed classification behind the surging Cavs.

That’s just how the old adage goes, you live by it, you die by it. It being “the three!”

Boston’s regular season was a foregone conclusion that they would be back in the top teams in the East, and they proved it. Especially the last two months of the season. Losing just 5 RS games from Feb 8 on. In the playoffs they faced Orlando in the first round. After one loss, they thoroughly earned a tough R1 victory over Orlando.

And that’s where the ‘everything went as planned’ part of the recap ends. R2 has been absolutely a mess for the Celtics and not just for on-court play, but for its future as well. Losing G1 was bad, a wake up call. The Celtics came out firing in G2, but also gave up a massive lead, losing control in the closing minutes.
Okay, so down 0-2, on the road, it’s a must-win, and Boston accomplished a big ask.

Just one more to even the series and retain touching distance of the series, G4 was very close. Both teams fighting for any buckets, and then Tatum went down with a serious Achilles injury – Knicks won after Boston was shellshocked by their star’s departure. The wheels came off in that game after JT went down. After a gritty G5 win, they end up bowing out in G6.

With huge implications from Tatums injury next season - this team can still compete for the top - but its ceiling is limited. What will happen to the boys in green this offseason ? Changes or stay the course until Tatum is healthy again. I wish him well, it's awful to have stars get a major injury in the playoffs, hate to see it. However, there's still some draft picks coming up and tradeable players if they decide as such...

LethalRangee wrote:Wow, what a series! Great fight from both teams.

Message to butthurt Celtics fans, especially The Corey's: Your team was never that good, never a superteam, and always beatable. You've had injury luck in your championship run just like other runs before it. You're not particularly special and you're not particularly creative with your offensive sets. 2-1 without the injury and an almost guaranteed 3-1 before Tatum went down. Have some dignity and take the L like a real fan instead of bashing others. Knicks deserved this series from the way they played, as much as it must hurt to hear. Came back from 2 20 point defecits and 1 14 point defecit late in 3 of their wins due to their grittiness, defense, and clutch shot making. Full of heart and never gave up, even when things got tough. GGs.

Interested to see what moves the Celtics will make this offseason, especially with their current roster's salary and the implications of the 2nd apron set to hit. Not to mention Tatum likely being out for most if not all of next season. Hope he makes a full recovery and can still peak higher than what he's done so far.

Took one post for someone to come in here and act like a **** idiot.

Plenty of Celtics fans paid their respects to the Knicks. Go and jam it up your arse.

I’m on record saying Knicks would’ve beaten them last season and also on record saying they’re extremely overrated and definitely NOT one of the best teams of all time like some made them out to be

They should tear it down and get rid of brown, KP, and Jrue. Definitely keep white over Brown in the grand scheme of things.

I don't think you could perform better than you did, coming off a championship season. Sure, it's easy to say the shot variance came to bite you in Game 1, and I guess tonight, but that wasn't it either. Think it's more that we were more like a buzzsaw that appeared at the wrong time.

Think Porzingis not being right for the entire playoffs did not help. Granted, you got admirable performances from Kornet & Horford. The Tatum injury just hurts and will sadly lead to a reset of sorts due to the luxury tax bill.

We looked old/non-athletic and it came up on us fast. Hopefully we can find some younger pieces to surround the core of the team.

Keep, Keep, As expected (given the injuries), declining team

There's really only one viable option and that is to shed salary which is not going to be easy given the awful contracts on this team. Brad Stevens will have to earn his paycheck more this offseason than any before it. I'd personally take this opportunity to take it down to the studs with only Tatum, Pritchard and Scheierman left. Really embrace being awful like the Spurs did when David Robinson went down. Make sure you get a top 5 pick in what looks to be one of the all-time strongest draft classes next season. Allow Tatum to heal with no rush. Take back young players and draft picks via the trades and like the Wizards did this season, play them all a lot of minutes no matter the losses. Returning this same team minus Tatum would be disastrous. They'd win just enough games to be a late seed or play-in and take them out of the high lottery.

If Boston had been healthy and had repeated (hardly a sure thing, just speculating), I wonder what the approach to a monster tax bill would have been?

Now, losing two rounds earlier and with Tatum out for next season, how will the approach by different? I don’t have the answers here. Boston built and payed heavily for a championship roster, and paid even more to keep it together. Is it rebuild or just a retool coming?

What thry decide to do and who is made available could determine (to some extent) which teams are the favorites for next season.

Only 1 thing matters moving forward: will Tatum return to his old self or will be now damaged goods?

If he does return to 100%, they’ll be back to their current status (a guaranteed playoff contender with potential to be a title contender year by year)


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They won a chip in 2024. A soft reset is not a bad thing here and the only reason any of us should be advocating for it is due to Tatum's injury. It's going to suck to have 54mm next year in street clothes, but a new ownership group and an enormous bill for a non-contender kind of makes no sense. So see who is movable to help get the financial house in order, take the gap year and come back stronger in 2026-27.

Keep keep.

C's are in a weird spot where they probably still feel they had a shot at the chip if everything bounced their way but then things started to go kinda wrong before they went really wrong. But it's really hard to catch that sort of fortune two years in a row. The mileage just catches up. Plus, the wheels are finally starting to come off of guys like Holiday and Horford, who are some of my favorites in this league but Father Time catches 'em all.

If there's a silver lining from the Tatum injury it's that it gives them the opportunity to do a more drastic retool without a lot of scrutiny that they should be running a similar team back and shooting for another chip while up against an increasingly untenable salary situation. From here, they can look to get younger and grab a few assets for a quick turnaround like the Warriors did between 2019 and 2022 when they won another. On that note, I'm not sure what the deal would be but maybe they kick the tires on a guy like Kuminga who needs to get out of GS. Holiday and some other pieces could go in a S&T? Maybe they move Brown in another deal? I'll be interested to see what they do because they're a well run org and I don't see them staying down too far for too long.

They need to go below the luxury tax to reset the clock. Contenders should align to get Holiday. He is the perfect glue guy and a great leader, and an amazing defender. Celtics don’t win last year without him. He is a bit old for the Celtics to keep with the Tatum injury so they should cash in.

They probably have to trade porzingis as well, but I don’t know what the market is for him. He is younger than holiday but very injury prone and he had a bad season overall.

Joe Mazzulla is the main reason they lost against the Knicks with those 2 losses at home. I would fire him.

Brad Stevens is a basketball genius and he should be kept at all costs. Sign him for life if you can

Capn'O wrote:Keep keep.

C's are in a weird spot where they probably still feel they had a shot at the chip if everything bounced their way but then things started to go kinda wrong before they went really wrong. But it's really hard to catch that sort of fortune two years in a row. The mileage just catches up. Plus, the wheels are finally starting to come off of guys like Holiday and Horford, who are some of my favorites in this league but Father Time catches 'em all.

If there's a silver lining from the Tatum injury it's that it gives them the opportunity to do a more drastic retool without a lot of scrutiny that they should be running a similar team back and shooting for another chip while up against an increasingly untenable salary situation. From here, they can look to get younger and grab a few assets for a quick turnaround like the Warriors did between 2019 and 2022 when they won another. On that note, I'm not sure what the deal would be but maybe they kick the tires on a guy like Kuminga who needs to get out of GS. Holiday and some other pieces could go in a S&T? Maybe they move Brown in another deal? I'll be interested to see what they do because they're a well run org and I don't see them staying down too far for too long.

I am sure warriors would love holiday but a s&t is very complicated because Kuminga is coming of his rookie deal so he will get a big salary increase, which means the outgoing salary is only half. This would require a lot of creativity.

Huge under-achieving by the Celtics.
They should have been in the NBA Finals and earn their reputation by winning it.
Instead not only they aren't going to be in the Finals, they will not even play in the Conference Finals.

Celtics are a great team but not dominant because they are way too reliant on the 3. That is why they didn't repeat. Live by the 3, die by the 3. They're not always gonna fall.

I think it would be a bad look if the Celtics give up on their players. They should run it back. Not like they have a lot of flexibility anyways.

A celtic fan wishlist.

1) Get a new Headcoach
2) Get rid of KP and Jrue

TheNG wrote:Huge under-achieving by the Celtics.
They should have been in the NBA Finals and earn their reputation by winning it.
Instead not only they aren't going to be in the Finals, they will not even play in the Conference Finals.

The previous 5 champions also went out in the conference semis.
There is nothing special about these Celtics to make this "huge under-achieving".
We got used to the dynasties repeating and threepeating that we forget how hard it is to repeat.

Mazzula deserves credit for getting that team a ring.

GG Celtics made a Laker fan happy although most Laker fans I'd assume

Time to re-rebuild around Tatum/Brown I guess.