The reality of the new NBA caught up with the Celtics, who might have to find a new way

Sports

add

NEW YORK — Jaylen Brown remembered the pain of losing, but something felt different this time.

He spent nearly a decade with the title in his sights, coming up short every year until he finally pulled it off. Suddenly, he went from a young star to Finals MVP, the hero of the championship story. It’s the ultimate adulation, the pinnacle of the sport.

Now Brown is back to reality, with another Boston Celtics season coming up short.

“S—, it feels the same. It almost feels worse,” Brown said. “We were trying to do something special, go back-to-back. We had a great group, we played well all year, so I think this probably stings even more.”

Welcome to the parity era. The NBA has been redesigned this way. Repeat championships are supposed to be damn near impossible now. Teams are threatened with a sea of red tape if they are audacious enough to pay their players what they deserve. The second apron was conceived to keep teams on the mountaintop as briefly as possible, ensuring every season is a mystery.

It’s working. With the New York Knicks advancing after eviscerating the Celtics 119-81 on Friday and the Oklahoma City Thunder and Denver Nuggets locked in an epic battle, nobody knows who is going to win the title. The only thing repeating in June these days is novelty.

The Celtics’ elimination marks seven straight NBA seasons without a repeat champion. They fought valiantly in Game 5 to bring this series back to New York, but they had nothing left to offer. This game was an embarrassment, an ugly, disjointed coda for a team that played such thoughtful basketball these past two seasons.

It’s a genuine shame that this could be the final remnants of this Celtics era. As Brown put it, losing to the Knicks feels like death. But there’s life after death awaiting whoever is left come October.

Everyone in that locker room understands things will look different next season. Whether the team has a dramatic overhaul or a tinging tweak remains to be seen. The Celtics have many options to choose from this offseason, particularly depending on the projected recovery timeline for Jayson Tatum’s Achilles surgery.

They bought back the same team this season, which seemed like a no-brainer. Championship teams just never get to do this. There’s always someone they can’t afford to keep, who earns a bigger role elsewhere. Brad Stevens and his front office deserve an endless round of applause from spreadsheet connoisseurs across the league for their cap management, even if they knew the second apron would be coming for their precious market-value contracts.

But in the wake of this playoff run, it’s fair to ask if this was the right decision. The way the regular season went, it’s easy to say yes.

But they hit a wall in May. Hard.

Jaylen Brown walks off the court after losing Game 6. (Brad Penner / Imagn Images)

Various injuries (and one illness) of varying degrees took away all that depth that made them untouchable over the past 19 months. They didn’t get that new-player spark that has always been the fresh coat of paint past champions apply.

This is not a new phenomenon in the NBA. Repeating has always been hard. The collective bargaining agreement makes it that much harder. But the Celtics always had to overcome attrition before external variables. That didn’t happen. It didn’t come close.

They lost the Kristaps Porziņģis factor and suddenly looked like the old Celtics again, unable to run offense in the fourth quarter and sometimes just showing up to games a level below their opponent. It was hard to distinguish the guiding principles of the Celtics in Game 6. They might need new ones come next season anyway.

Though Joe Mazzulla’s style of basketball has more depth to it than just spamming 3-pointers, a lot of his schematic approach has been the circumstance of roster construction. This team was groundbreaking last season, putting together an eight-man rotation in which everyone could shoot and create. No team had done it across the board in quite the same way.

Under Mazzulla, the Celtics augmented a trend of cross-match hunting and tuned it to perfection. But that magic didn’t last long. This was a whimpering goodbye from a brief era of innovation. The league evolves in quick cycles, sometimes as short as three years. The Celtics capitalized on this era, but that could change again soon, depending on how the next month of basketball shakes out. Teams always follow the lead of the champion, but that’s not the Celtics anymore.

If this is the last we see of this Celtics team as composed, it still left its mark on the NBA. This team embraced the theory behind high-volume 3s in a way no team had before. Mazzulla spent so much time hammering home the classic analytics mantra that was well litigated before he became the latest poster child for it. They gave analytical theory character and purpose, as much as they may be derided for it.

Until last year, the Celtics had a habit of surrendering big leads, constantly faltering in crunchtime as the offense lost its flow. Porziņģis was a fail-safe to get through those moments, which gave their offense so much clarity that it held up even when he missed most of the postseason.

After two playoff runs mostly without him — last year literally, this year in spirit — the Celtics have seen the range of outcomes when they don’t have their X-factor. That’s where the little wins are supposed to come in. The 50-50 balls, the momentum plays, the coach-speak minutiae that separate the best teams left in the postseason.

“Those are the things that, regardless of if you work on them one day, two days, two years, three years, they are stuff that you’ve got to retool every single day,” Mazzulla said.

The Celtics debuted a new model that has worked its way around the league, but what happens to the original prototype when it’s no longer the shiny new toy?

The rebrand is being forced upon the Celtics. Stevens has proved he is not one to just run it back for the sake of simplicity. He has been bold and methodical in his tenure, even when that wasn’t the obvious move. Now it is the obvious move. It’s not even much of a choice, with the important caveat that Tatum somehow being ready for the playoffs next season would change everything. The team shouldn’t plan on that, but it can’t ignore it if it’s there.

The Celtics spent the season as the defending champs that everyone wanted to take down. Now they’re back with the pack. It’s not where they want to be, but 29 teams end up there every season. This is just a return to reality, as it’s meant to be.

“Obviously, you win a championship and you’ve got that target on your back from day one,” Derrick White said. “There’s ups and downs through every season.

“And this part sucks.”

(Photo of Sam Hauser: Brad Penner / Imagn Images)

This news was originally published on this post .

Share on

email

Previous

trending_flat

Juan Soto booed in return to Yankee Stadium

mlb

Next

trending_flat

As últimas notícias do mercado: as contratações e os rumores de transferências que estão na ordem do dia

Sports