Celtics lose game 7 to Philadelphia 76ers
The Celtics lost to The Philadelphia 76ers yesterday in Game 7 to get knocked out of the playoffs in round 1.
It’s easy to see the bad side. Going into the playoffs, The Celtics were favored by many to win the East. Instead, they didn’t even get out of round one. It was the first time the 76ers have ever come back like that. Beating the Sixers has been a constant during my NBA lifetime. I’m sure many will be panicking.
They shouldn’t. The Celtics lost fair and square. Mazzulla tried every lineup under the sun for Game 7, but there was no answer for Embiid. This healthy Embiid played like an MVP again. And when you add Paul George, Maxey, and Edgecombe… that’s quite a good team. I don’t know if they’ll beat the Knicks, but it’s definitely possible.
The Celtics have some good excuses.
They had five or so wide-open shots in the last couple minutes and missed all of them. Some look at that as a lack of shooting skill. I see it as some bad luck when it was needed most.
Jayson Tatum sat out the game, I suspect that decision will be brutally second-guessed.
And we have to call out the terrible support coaches. One coach deliberately held on to the ball too long and got a technical in the first quarter. Another one told Mazzulla to call for a challenge on an obvious foul call. Real points lost from dumb support coaches.
Excuses only go so far, and Philly would have their share of excuses as well if they had lost. Last night the 76ers were the better team.
The Bigger Picture
Although the Celtics got knocked out earlier than expected, it was a great season. A marvelous season. Why?
Let’s reset the clock. Let’s put on our Brad Stevens GM hat and reset the clock.
The Celtics bought many free agents over the last few years. They built a super team. That stacked team won the 2024 title. But a team built like that isn’t sustainable. We were far over the salary cap(s), and the penalties for repeatedly violating the salary cap are too large. We had to dump salary this year. Even if Tatum hadn’t had a season ending injury this team would have been ripped up this year.
The Celtics started this season without Jason Tatum, Al Horford, Kristaps Porzingis, Luke Kornet, and Jrue Holiday. They were left with Jaylen Brown as their star, Derrick White and Payton Pritchard as two more good players, and a bunch of nobodies. They even had to trade away Anfernee Simons (their only good off-season acquisition) for the dried out husk of Nikola Vucevic. They were predicted to win around 41 games and be a play-in team. Instead, they were incredible.
They were supposed to tank. The obvious strategy was to keep Tatum out for the whole year, to stink it up, and come back next year with Tatum and a fantastic new rookie. Everyone knew that except Brad Stevens, Joe Mazzulla, Jaylen Brown, and so on. The rest of the league could call it a gap year, these Celtics said all along they were competing for a title.
Brown took on the burden. He elevated himself from star to superstar and justly made first team. Mazzulla evolved the strategies from the superteam, adapting his analytical approach to the talent he had. The group of nobodies quickly grew up. No one knew their name, but they got results. Queta, Walsh, Scheierman, Garza, Harper, Hugo… easily the cheapest supporting cast in the league with the lowest expectation. None of them had a resume or NBA experience. Yet they got results. In the end, the Celtics delivered a stunning 56 wins, 15 games over expectations. They entered the playoffs as the number two seed. Most teams would salivate over this kind of “gap year”.
They are now well positioned for next year. Although they still need to stay under the second apron, by being so ruthless this year, they have a great deal more financial flexibility next year. I honestly don’t fully understand the rules here… I think they now have a mid-level exception ($15-16 MM) they can use to get a quality rotation player. They now have a large trade exception of $27.7 MM they can use to get another piece. They have several players who overperformed this year and will be even better next year. Tatum looks as good as ever, maybe better with all that rest. They have another full year of Tatum and Brown in the primes of their career. This a team with a huge number of assets and good reason to be optimistic going into next year.
So. It’s a shame The Celtics couldn’t close out the 76ers. But this season was an incredible success. Celtics fans should feel delighted with the season that was. They are well positioned to be dominant again next year. Let’s go Celtics!
Before I respond to particulars, here’s a hot take. Giannis is overrated. That’s right, Giannis is overrated. I believe he hasn’t been traded yet because other GMs don’t think he’s as good as the Bucks think he is. Giannis is a wonderful human being. He is clearly amazing at basketball, but not more than that.
1) His style of play doesn’t work well with others. Like Luka and others, teammates tend to sit around and watch him charge down the middle. Those teams don’t win.
2) He’s older. Bill Simmons did an extended take on this, the gist is that he is at a time in his career where you expect physical declines. Add to that his style of play is unusually physical so a decline in that skillset leaves him more degrading more than others. You don’t trade for a declining player unless you’re forced to (e.g. Vucevic).
I would likely trade Brown for Giannis straight up. But I might not. I wouldn’t throw anything else into the deal.
One more comment to your follow-up Muttrox. While I agree with much of what you said, the NY Knicks point is not totally accurate. Should we dump on the Knicks if they don’t win? Well that depends. If they make the finals and put up a decent fight before losing to OKC, then sure, praise them for a good season and roll it back next year. If they had lost to Atlanta in the 1st round or even if they go down to a mediocre, play-in Sixers team, then heads will roll. Coach? Out. Bridges? Out. KAT? Might go out too. Giannis would be on the table, if they could somehow swing it (which they might not).
The Celtics have a rich history, both distant past and recent, of great success and have some goodwill to fall back on. So two shitty and depressing playoff losses in consecutive years to huge underdogs? Eh, no big deal, we’ve got fingers and toes decorated with championship rings. Try again next year. In contrast, I’m 56 years old and I cannot remember a Knicks championship. Not to mention the Knicks were the worst run franchise in the NBA for probably a decade not too long ago. Knicks fans are desperate. We have a star on a good contract. He’s got a few prime years left. After that it might be the abyss again, with a cupboard currently devoid of draft capital. We are impatient, we need significant progress, and if Embiid ends up celebrating a game 7 victory on the Madison Square Garden floor and dancing on the logo, all hell will break loose in NY. Hold on to your hats!
As the dust clears on the Celtics Sixers series, I’m finding a lot of talking heads agreeing with my earlier take of trading Brown. I think they saw my blog post and stole my ideas. See Off the Pike Ringer podcast that dropped today for supporting arguments.
However I agree with the response to my comment that the Celtics can “retool” keeping Brown and be good next year. It would take serious guts to trade a top 15 player in the league in his prime. It’s the kind of decision that lost the Dallas GM his job post Luka trade and earned him well deserved ire from half of Texas.
But there’s evidence that Brown wants to be a #1 on a team, something he will never be as long as Tatum is there. Does he really want to go back to second fiddle? Watching Tatum get first team all NBAs while he fights for third team scraps? Giving up 5 shots a game next season? Watching Tatum being higher scoring, better shooting, better rebounding, better passing, better handling, better in impact-related advanced stats, and more popular?
Brown’s won his ring. Remember Durant. He went to the Warriors, won his rings, won his finals MVPs, but got disgruntled because no matter how good he was, it was Steph’s team, not his. So he left a super team and probably more rings to be top banana on middling playoff teams.
What does Brown want, I wonder? He hinted at it in his Twitch video the other night. But who knows.
I agree that it’s more likely he stays just due to the riskiness of it for Stevens. But gossip is bound to fly this summer. And one thing we know is that Brown is plugged in and hears all the rumors and trade machine talk.
Clyde — Fundamentally it’s very hard to be a true title contender. Every team save one ends the season unhappy with the fans arguing about how they blew it. Judging a team by their failure to win a title isn’t fair. Your Knicks are a good team now, we shouldn’t dump all over them because they can’t win a championship with it (they also can’t beat OKC or San Antonio). The Celtics have been true title contenders a lot! Buying that championship was a great deal, even if meant a rebuilding year or two.
I don’t think we should trade Brown. He was the finals MVP a couple years ago, he’s all NBA for a reason, etc. We’ve debated the on/off stats a lot, I agree with your points. IMO, he needs to make decisions much quicker, being forced into more difficult shots than others is why his numbers aren’t good there (I think). Trading him should be on the table, no one is untouchable. If San Antonio wants to give us Wemby for Brown, great. If New York wants to give us Brunson and Mitchell and four number ones, great. Same goes for Tatum, no one is untradeable.
But I don’t see the need. Next year we’ll have Tatum and Brown in their prime for the full year (and each of them has gotten better ever year), a couple quality free agents, and a deep supporting cast. It’s a really good team! That’s a team that should be in the Eastern Conference Finals, which is about all you can ask for.
Chris – I would go further with Tatum, they need to aggressively cut back on his defended threes. And with both Tatum and Brown, they need to move the ball and make decisions much more quickly. They are so good they can make difficult shots, but it’s much better to find an easier shot.
Taominator – those are good points. Clyde sent me some data on how teams that rely on the 3 are doing very badly in the playoffs, all your reasoning holds up.
We need to separate cause and effect. The root cause of all this is the salary cap. We had to cut our team down viciously after buying a championship with repeated second apron violations. That led to a certain style of play this last year. It’s still amazing we got as far as we did with it. Sure it has weaknesses, yes we need a real center and less reliance on three point shooting — but we did that because we had to. You go to war with the army you have.
That’s why I’m optimistic. We are well positioned to have a kickass army next year.
Chris sent me this privately: https://www.celticsblog.com/post/nf99pX1X9x1A
Too good not to share. He swears he wrote his thoughts up before he saw it.
Full disclosure- I hate the Celtics. My childhood is riddled with memories of the Celtics dancing on the Knicks grave every season. But I hate-watch them quite a lot and have opinions and questions for Celtics fans and their management.
In the Mazz era, they have won a championship and lost three playoff series where they were the overwhelming favorite (we’re talking 80-90% favorites) including two game 7 losses on their home floor, something that never happened for most of Celtics history.
So what is the true Celtics outlook as is? A perennial East favorite who have just fallen upon some bad luck (eg if that Pritchard 3 had just fallen…), or a team that got extremely fortunate their championship year and basically won by default as all the major stars they faced were out or compromised?
If you think the former, then maybe you don’t do anything major with the team. Ride it back, Tatum will be healthier, the young guys a year older, they will be better, get to the final, and who knows maybe SGA or Wemby will be hurt and the pieces will fall into place.
I’m in the latter camp. Something needs to happen to make the Celtics a true title contender. Each year Tatum and Brown are a year older, they have a lot of miles on them, and injuries will start to become more and more a factor. White is on the decline. Meanwhile OKC is young and is stacked with an obscene amount of draft and player capital, and San Antonio have a nucleus under 23 years old and scary good. Boston has to get better.
Let’s start with their biggest strengths – their young guys and their GM. Stevens waves his magic wand and turns late first round draft picks into solid energy contributors who are super cheap. Scheierman, Walsh, Hugo, and Queta (a free agent pickup) are all good role players and all <$3M a year and all under Celtics control for multiple years. This cheap depth allows them to shop in the high rent district for stars.
Pritchard is on a very cheap deal and it would be insane to move him.
Hauser is expendable. He’s $10M+ and is a pretty one dimensional player who just got benched in game 7 for Scheierman and Harper Jr.
Tatum is the superstar. Five first team all NBAs. Does everything. He’s on the other side of an Achilles rupture but it’s reasonable to think he can be most of the player he was before.
That leaves Brown. Let me say it – I don’t think he’s nearly as good as people think he is. And now is the time to sell. His stock will never be higher. Why is he overrated?
1. His stats were up this year but mostly because he got a big chunk of Tatum’s usage. Field goal percentage? Slightly lower than his career average. 3 point percentage? Lower than his career average. Turnovers? Significantly higher than any prior season.
2. His on-off stats are just too bad to ignore. The Celtics were considerably better with Brown off the court than on the court this season. His net on/off was NEGATIVE 5.5. That’s in the 5th percentile of the NBA. Some entire teams didn’t have players ranking that bad.
I hear excuses. Oh, that stat isn’t correlated to impact. Well, the league leaders in the stat include SGA, Jokic, and Cade are all in the top 6. SGA has been in the top 5% in on/off each of the last three seasons. Jokic has been in the top 3% each of the last 5 seasons.
Another argument- this year was an aberration because the Celtics bench was so good. Well, Brown’s on/off has been negative each of the past four seasons. And I heard on a podcast today (although I cannot confirm) that his playoff on/off this year was also big in the negatives. This is a pattern. He is a major outlier in his overall impact on the court compared to other stars. (For the record, Tatum has had a positive on/off every season of his career, and 5 times has ranked in the top 5%). It cannot be shrugged off. Brown has positives, but his negatives go underrated and his team tends to play more cohesively with less hero ball when he’s not out there.
Throw in his gigantic salary ( on the books for several more years), and his clear desire to be the #1 on a team (based on his recent comments that this season (the one largely sans Tatum) was his favorite in his career) – and some alarm bells are ringing.
What would Danny Ainge do? He was famous for not letting loyalty get in the way, and selling high. Now might be the time. If the right deal is out there.
Agree with tenor of post with just a few additional comments. Agree that it was a fantastic season which signifcantly surpassed expectations. That we had Tatum back for a run made it even more exciting, but also raised expectations so was a disappointment at the end. MUTTROX, for someone who is data guy, your use of “bad luck” is surprising. Yes, in the 4th quarter of game 7, Celtics missed multiple wide-open shots. That doesn’t fall under the “luck” category. Bad luck is when Magic would dribble on the parquet and hit a dead spot on the old wood floors losing the ball. Relying on and missing 3 pointers in a game 7 has to be factored in for multiple reasons: a) intensity of playing defense all game in playoffs vs. going through motions with soft D most of game in regular season, b) physicality of playoffs that no many easy shots, c) per a and b, all that tires out the legs when shooting in the 4th drops shooting percentages, and d) tougher to make clutch shots in a game 7 from 3 point land than Embiid inside the paint.
Look, Celtics won jacking up 50 3fg in 2024 but they also had Horford, Porzingis and Holiday in the mix who are experienced and can make clutch shots. I like the upcoming offseason and bullish that Brad Stevens will pick up some pieces to deepen the bench. And will be interesting to see if JT and JB can co-exist both as 1A options rather than the previous 1a and 1b players on a team.
Good analysis, and I mostly agree. It’s difficult, though, for me to go into next season without a couple lingering concerns from the Celts’ playoff performance and early exit. First, I think integrating Tatum with the new lineup(s) and with a the newly assertive JB is still very much a work in progress. I think Tatum should focus more on rebounding, D, and scoring near the basket (drives or posts) and less on perimeter ball handling and shooting. This is pretty much a consensus view, I believe, but really the team has never adequately addressed it. Second, the team needs a couple more wrinkles offensively to score, so they can win games even if their 3-pt shots aren’t falling. Having Porzingis in that role was such a huge part of their success in 2024, and they’ve never replicated that on the roster. Spoiler alert: Vooch isn’t the answer.