Everything Went Wrong with the Boston Celtics

All right, let's talk about the, a couple of the exits from this postseason.

Let's start with the Boston Celtics, which just collapsed.

It's the only other word you can use for it, collapsed over the final 3 games of this series against Philadelphia, wind up losing game 7, was competitive there into the 4th quarter, but then the Sixers kind of ran away with it a little bit, uh, at the end.

Um, there are two schools of thought with the Celtics.

One is, well, they were kind of playing with house money this year, which, you know, I guess if you go back to October, you can definitely say that.

This was not a team with high expectations.

They lost 4 of their top 9 guys in their rotation.

They thought Jayson Tatum was going to be out for the entire year.

Um, so yes, in a sense, they were playing with house money because a lot of people thought it was a gap year.

On the other side of it, It hasn't been a gap year for some time now.

That team won 56 games.

They were the number 2 seed in the Eastern Conference.

And if you looked at the odds, they were considered the favorite to come out of the Eastern Conference, even though they were the number 2 seed.

Jayson Tatum was back.

He was playing big minutes down the stretch.

We can get to that.

And this team looked like it had all the ingredients to be a champion.

Championship team.

Then they went to Philadelphia, played the Sixers, a team they've owned over the last decade, and they laid an egg over the final 3 games of this series.

So what is your takeaway from all this?

Do you think this was acceptable for the Celtics?

Do you, do you kind of shrug at the, the loss, or do they deserve some heat for bowing out in the first round of a season?

That a lot of people believe could end in a trip to the finals.

Well, a few things.

First of all, I don't think it's just the last decade.

Haven't they not beaten Boston?

I mean, haven't the Sixers not beaten Boston in a playoff series since 1982?

Do I have that right?

I'm more thinking about like, is that 40 plus years, the Joel Embiid era?

No, certainly the Joel Embiid era has been bad, but I think it goes back even further than that with Lucy and the football and Charlie Brown sort of situation.

Um, also, it's just a great reminder, and we, you know, Orlando is an example, the Celtics are an example.

A few baskets, man, because yes, the Celtics did fall apart down the stretch the way you, you said over those last 3 games, but also, it looked like there was 1 or 2 shots at the end of game 7 that momentum had been building for the Celtics.

And if they had made, you just sort of felt like a run was coming on for Boston that would have sealed game 7.

For them.

The building was rocking.

The Sixers were playing under the weight of all of the playoff failures of the past.

It seemed like the Celtics were close and we're going to push them over.

So it's just a great example of, again, Orlando, if they had hit some shots during that stretch of awfulness, if the Celtics had hit one or two more of those shots toward the end of game 7, we could be having a completely different conversation.

So I'm just always mindful of that when we talk about big sweeping changes, right?

What's needed, what's necessary.

I, I, I think, look, the Celtics have proved their mettle over the last 3 or 4 years.

Jayson Tatum doing what he did has proved his mettle.

I don't think this is a referendum on the Celtics in either direction.

Is it disappointing that this is what happened to this team?

Absolutely.

I think you have to give the Sixers, Joel Embiid, Nick Nurse, Tyrese Maxey, VJ Edgecombe.

I think you have to give them some credit for what happened.

They look pretty great.

Paul George has been playing fantastic.

Um, the big question for me with the Celtics is what do you do next, especially in the light of some of the things Jalen Brown has said, because, you know, not only was he, I think what made headlines was he went on his Twitch stream and was very critical of the referees, and you probably have the exact quote.

He kind of critical of.

Kind of critical of his coach too .

Well, that's what, that's what I was about to say.

So the referee stuff and him saying that some of the some of the referees were against him, I believe was the quote.

Yeah, like, he said some of the referees were against him, but he also said like other referees have told him basically that there's a vendetta against him which definitely piqued the attention of the NBA.

Like, there'll be a couple of phone calls made there.

That's gonna get the headlines on the fines in the short term, but in the long term, it seemed like he was being a little critical of Stevens.

He said that this year, this past year was his favorite year of playing basketball.

That didn't go over well with people either, not the year he won.

Title this year.

It's not really that surprising to me though.

Like I knew coming in Jalen Brown was gonna love every minute of being the number one option, by the way, and I don't blame him for that.

This does not make him a bad person.

It is just indicative of something.

And if you are as smart as an organization as the Celtics are, you are too smart to not pay attention to that.

And this to me is my question.

Would you put Brown in a Giannis package if you were looking?

I'm not doing it.

I'm not doing it.

I've taken a, a vow against putting Jalen Brown in trades.

I'm not doing it.

I'm not doing.

I've been doing it since 2017.

I'm not doing it.

Like, every time I did it with Kawhi Leonard, I did it with Anthony Davis.

I did it with Kevin Durant.

I'm not doing it anymore.

And first of all, and no, the short answer to that is no.

I would not do that because Jalen Brown is a lot more reliable at this point than Giannis.

Like, plus, like you've got Giannis and you've got.

Tatum, I don't know how that, I mean, I guess it kind of would work.

There, there, I don't know.

I wouldn't spicy after the weekend of Jalen Brown quotes.

That's all.

Plus, I don't think like ownership's gonna do that.

Like you're not taking on another, you know, and I know Jalen makes max money, but you're not taking on Giannis who's gonna want a contract extension at a huge number as well attached to the Jayson Tatum contract as well.

I, I think if there was going to be a Jalen Brown trade, and then for the record, I am not advocating for a Jalen Brown trade, um, it would probably.

be for like multiple pieces like and I, I floated the idea of like could Atlanta make a run at Jalen Brown after the season they had.

He'd make some sense down there.

He's a Georgia native.

Uh, they could give back Zacharishohe, Dyson Daniels, a mix of, of kind of players down there that might make sense for Boston, but I don't, I don't think you react to this, um, season by doing the thing people do, which is like split the Jays.

No, no, no, no.

And by the way, I've never been a proponent of splitting the Jays, obviously.

And even before they won the title together, I think, why would you not want two great players on your team?

That is what the goal is, right?

And this idea of my team, your team, I've always thought is ridiculous.

That being said, it's if Jalen Brown wants to leave.

I don't think if you're the Celtics, you are looking to move Jalen Brown, or at least they shouldn't be.

But if Jalen Brown says in private, a stronger version of what he just said in public of, hey, this is my favorite year of playing basketball , and in private, he says, you know what, I, I'd like to have.

that role going forward.

You know, we've learned from different players.

Different players want different things.

And I think that it is time to listen to some of that.

And I always bring Vince Carter up as an example.

Toward the end of his career, everyone was like, why don't you go to the Warriors?

The Warriors want you.

You could be the last, you know, one of the last guys, the savvy vet on the bench and win a title and finally win that ring, Vince.

And he kept going to like Atlanta and all these other teams where there was clearly no shot of winning anything.

But he said, I want to play basketball.

I do not.

I want to sit on the bench toward the end of my NBA career.

I like going out and playing basketball, and I'm going to the teams that are promising me minutes.

Different guys want different things.

And even though the Celtics, I think, are going to be again in the position next season to be a favorite in the East, it's possible Jalen Brown says, I really liked this season.

I'd like to replicate that.

And if I can't do it here, I want to do it somewhere else.

We don't know.

And that to me is sort of the bigger question mark, and that only comes off of his comments.

I'm not trying to sit here and cause division or speculation.

Or do some of the stuff we've seen over the last 5 years.

I'm only looking at what he said.

And if I'm Boston, I am sitting down with him and really getting to what do you want?

And if it's to stay, that is fantastic.

Let's keep going.

There are a couple of things with the team construction that, um, I think were exposed in the series that they didn't have the front court depth they needed.

Uh, they made the deal with Anthony Simons for Nicola Vusovich.

That was a catastrophe.

I mean, wasn't that if you had known.

He wouldn't have made that deal.

I mean, you probably still do it anyway just because Simons, you didn't really need, um, he was a microwave guy off the bench, but you had guys that could kind of fill in.

I mean, Derrick White didn't shoot the ball well for most of the series, but you didn't really need Simons as much as you needed to take a flyer on Vusovich, and he couldn't just never get it going.

Like he's always been bad defensively, but if you're not going to make three-point shots, which he didn't, you are useless to this team.

And, and he turned out to be useless.

I don't think he'll be back next year.

Um, I, Joe Missoula got my vote for Coach of the Year.

I thought he had a bad series.

I thought he had a very bad series.

Um, you know, we talk about this team all the time, how reliant they are on the three-point shot, and they have been to an extreme under Joe Missoula.

It's worked.

2024, they won a championship, but this is not the same team as what they had in 2024.

And yet they continued throughout the series, even though the three-point shot wasn't falling, to keep putting up threes.

In the four games they lost, they shot 27% from three-point range.

Stop shooting 3s.

Please stop shooting 3s.

Go to the basket.

I thought that was a tactical mistake.

I don't know what that lineup was at the start of game 7.

Like that was like a Beautiful Mind type of bullshit where it's like, all right, we're gonna show them things we haven't seen before.

We're gonna bring Baylor Shireman, who hadn't really played much in that series.

And all of a sudden, Ron Harper Jr.

who was a two-way guy like 10 minutes ago, was gonna play.

Lucas Garza is our starting center, and it didn't work.

They were down big in the 1st quarter and they spent the rest of the game trying to claw their way out of it.

That was a mistake.

I also think Like Jayson Tatum at his uh media availability on Sunday said something where he, he, and I'm paraphrasing, but he described.

This injury to his left leg as inevitable.

And one of the reasons he said that was because he was playing so many minutes at the end of the season.

Why the hell is he playing that many minutes at the end of the season?

Why is he playing the last two games he played in the regular season, he played 39 and 40 minutes respectively.

This was a guy that was a little over a month removed from coming back from a popped, uh, Achilles, or, yeah, popped Achilles.

Uh, why was he playing that many minutes in the first place?

We are in an era where like the Spurs, who Victor Wibayama had like a calf injury and.

November, we're playing him 30 minutes per game, max, when you get to the end of the, uh, into April.

Uh, Lamelo Ball, another example, a guy that has been banged up for most of his career, they played him sub 30 minutes per game all season long.

Why is Jayson Tatum coming back from that injury playing those kind of minutes?

Why is he playing?

That is, I, I, I mean, I, I, I, I didn't say this at the time.

I wish I did because like, I could kind of see somewhat the method to the madness where it's like, all right, you want to build him up, build the stamina up, get him ready for the postseason.

But man, they should have just.

accepted what Jayson Tatum was.

He was a thirty-ish minute per game guy, and they shouldn't try to overtax him because Tatum is right.

Like, it was inevitable.

He does have a baby leg on his right side, which a lot of coaches were texting me during the season.

Like, like he's got a smaller leg because of the injury.

Like he shouldn't have been out there playing that many minutes because there was always going to be, not the risk of re-injuring the same injury, but another injury because you are trying to figure out how to play, you know, off that, that previous, uh, injury.

Well.

I, I think there was, there was a method to the madness.

Now, I don't know if it was the right method, but I don't think it was just sort of happenstance.

Drew Hanlon, his trainer who's been with him since the beginning, is one of the best in the business.

The Celtics have a good medical staff.

This was not like an accident that he played that many minutes.

I assume the, the intention was, yes, ramp him up.

And I think he had been playing so well, you kind of could say, and maybe Jason, I don't know how much Jason was saying this.

I don't know how much anyone else around him was saying, hey, he's just back.

Let's just treat him like he's back as a.

As to treating him like, hey, he's a little extra and let's, you know, great , 30 minutes a game of, uh, not quite recovered Jayson Tatum is, is a bonus we didn't expect.

That's not how they were approaching this playoffs.

It wasn't like, OG bonus guy.

It was OG mainstay of our team guy.

And so if you're treating him as the mainstay of your team guy, yes, you do want to ramp him up in minutes before playoffs where you are going to play him that much during the playoffs.

So I think it was on purpose.

I just don't know if hindsight, it was the right question.

And it's funny, I heard Bill Simmons, you know, I was very eager.

Of course, to be, uh, what does Bill Simmons' take on the Celtics, you know, after that game in that series, and we had a lot of texture in that series.

I'm sure, I'm sure you did.

And, um, you know, one of the questions he asked, which I thought was interesting is you have just a greater division than ever over what play is like in the regular season versus the playoffs, over what's important, how much seeding really matters.

We just saw the #1 seed in the East taken to 7 games.

We just saw the #2 seed go down in the East after 7 games.

Do you just Start treating the regular season as only a ramp up to the playoffs and keep guys out longer periods of time to make sure they're healthy or play them different minutes, different ways.

Does Nikola Jokic not play and go for the 65 games and be fresher for that first round series against Minnesota?

Again, you know, I thought when, when Bill started talking about that, I was like, yeah, I mean, look, we've been talking for a while about the difference between the regular season and the playoffs and things the NBA has done out of, in my opinion, in some cases, when I say the NBA I mean owners because.

The owners are the ones who make these decisions, um, that owners have done things out of greed.

I mean, I've been talking about this a lot for the last few months.

I think expansion as opposed to relocation is a greed move.

I think that some of this, the tanking reform, the lottery reform, the even the aprons and all of that is about greed because if the truth is if owners wanted to stop tanking, they wouldn't have to do all of these things.

What they would do is go down to their general manager's offices as a group, as 30 people and say we are stopping tanking.

Nobody's doing this anymore.

That's it.

That's all it would take.

It would not take these arcane rules, and fans have to suffer through these terrible losing seasons.

We talk about how bad some of the basketball has been in a third of the NBA for especially the last 3 or 4 months.

Fans have had to suffer through that, and it could have all been avoided from the group of owners as a group going down and saying, we are not doing this anymore, but they're all too greedy.

They all want their team to do it.

They all want their team to succeed.

And I, I just, I.

I look at the way the regular season has now separated even more from the playoffs, and I wonder if Bill is right, and we're going to see more and more of that in the future.

I don't think it's a binary decision though.

Like, I think you can.

You can still chase those top seeds, and I think it's important to chase those top seeds because would Detroit have won the first round against Orlando without being number one?

Would Cleveland have beaten Toronto without having home court advantage?

I think home court advantage is pretty important.

I do think there are like ways during a game to scale a guy back.

I mean, Jayson Tatum.

You know, it would take him out for 6 extra minutes per game really have killed the Celtics?

Like, the same thing for Jokic.

Would sitting him down for 4 or 5 extra minutes have absolutely killed the Denver Nuggets.

I, look, those minutes add up.

All of a sudden you do that for 5 or 6 games, you're talking about having a full game off, basically.

Uh, so I think there's, there's a way to do.

Uh, a little bit of both.

I love how you just find a way to get it back to tanking over.

That was a nice, nice little, nice little pivot there.

That's a, that's a conversation for, for another day.

We got the draft lottery coming up, you know.

Yeah, I, I, I look, to put a button on the Celtics.

I, I don't think that, um, there's a need for radical change.

I think it's very disappointing because the expectations were sky-high at the end of the season and they should have been, um, but I think they made some mistakes with roster construction that didn't get enough bigs on that team.

And again, I don't really blame Brad Stevens for it because Like coming in, there weren't yet, like, people, I'm around that team all the time.

Like coaches, staffers, things like that.

Um, they, nobody thought coming into the season they were gonna be this good.

Nobody believed that.

Like they didn't.

Like some of them believed they'd actually be pretty bad if we're being honest.

Um.

So I don't blame Brad Stevens for not going out and getting like, boy, we should get a Jonas Valentunis type to make sure we have somebody there, you know, backstopping.

We should be the ones going out and getting an Andre Drummond.

Like they, they, they weren't thinking that way at the start of the season.

And you get to the trade deadline and the only thing that's out there is Vusovich because it matches your salary with Simon's.

You just do a one for one type of swap.

I thought that was a smart move.

I still think I would do it again 10 times out of 10 and then cross my Vuccevich just can't play winning basketball, man.

I just can't, like hasn't been a part of it and for most of his career and You know, just forget the defense.

Make a shot.

You had open threes on that team.

This is Make a Celtic dams coming out, but make a screaming at the TV.

Make a shot.

I'm just saying make a shot in the series.

He didn't do it, and that cost the Celtics huge.

Uh, Kata was not great either, uh, in this series.

Again, I don't think the series is a referendum on the Celtics in any way.

All of this, you know, there's a lot of found money going on in this season, and while Joe.

Missoula and Jalen Brown never had any intention of making this a gap year.

The front office being responsible and what they should have done, made smart decisions knowing that their, you know, best player was going to be gone for as big a chunk of the season and possibly all of the season as he was.

So all of this leads me to ask you, do you think the Sixers and Knicks, do you see the Sixers coming out of the series or the favored Knicks coming out of the series?

I don't know.

I still like the Knicks' home court.

I like this Joel Embiid Carl Towns matchup.

They've got a lot of history dating back to that brawl , don't they, in 200.

They've kind of buried the hatchet since then, though?

I mean, you know, I, I know that when Kat's mom died, there was some stuff that was said between the two, and they've, they've in interviews, they've talked about their friendship, but I think it's gonna be a physical series between the very curious.

We've got two great center matchups in this next round, obviously the Gombert.

Wembuyama, little brother, big brother ment mentor.

There's literally nobody in the NBA who knows Wemy as well as Gobert does.

And then of course between Kat and Embiid, and obviously there's a spiciness and when I keep saying, is it, will they, because who knows what's going to happen with the garden crowd and you know how Embiid can just say things and you know I've already gotten texts from New York friends that are buying tickets down.

I mean that's gonna be, it's gonna be Madison Square Garden is it South yet insane.

Uh, well, you said I'm beat, so don't tell your sell your tickets.

Don't sell your tickets.

That's just I think inviting crazy Knicks fans to go out there and overspend for these tickets like that is gonna have the exact opposite effect that he hoped it was gonna have.

I don't know.

We'll see, we'll see.

Who knows?

Obviously Knicks fans, I'm telling you, I've gotten seating charts from these people.

Like I know 3 of them that are sending me stuff.

But, but in terms of the matchup, look, I do think the cat , you, I heard you say before the pod that you think Kat's gonna have a really big series.

Do you think the defensive liability there is going to be an issue?

What do you, what do you think of the NBA somewhat by Mitchell Robinson?

Only like 14 minutes a game is Mitchell Robinson going give them, but I think he's He's gonna help.

Do you hack Mitchell Robinson for the key moments?

I mean, I just, I think that I agree.

I would pick the Knicks in the series, but I think that it might be closer than some people think.

I think it's close because the Sixers are playing great.

Like MBid is coming off the best Game 7 he's had like ever.

Uh, Maxi's playing like an all NBA guy.

Paul George looks comfortable.

BJ Edgecombe got a series under his belt.

I think it's, it's, it's pretty good.

It's, it's pretty good do see the, the Knicks giving Maxi the, if not 94 ft treatment, certainly just being all over him.

Uh, the entire time.

Yeah, they got some big bodies they can throw at them in it.

Um, but you know , and also the Sixers, you know, unfortunately have had the worst luck in modern basketball history, and it's entirely possible that some other weird crazy, I mean, at this point with the Sixers, if an alien came down from the sky and Space Jam style kidnapped one of their players, I would be like, OK, that tracks, right?

I mean, Joel Embiid has broken his face twice in playoff series.

I mean, who knows.

But, um, I think that's going to be spicier, assuming health, more competitive than some people realize.

And I'm excited to see the Sixers team be what they potentially could have been when this was all put together because as you know, I, unlike you, believed in BJ Edgecombe from the start, and, um, I just think, you know, it'd be nice to see Paul George have a little renaissance.

I like seeing Embiid, who's had so many issues, at least get to show us what he actually can do.

I think it'd be a lot of fun.

I had, uh, I'm just looking at one of my Knicks fan friends that sent me the StubHub for Game, uh, game, was it Game Friday is the Game 5 or Game 3 Friday, I guess in Philadelphia.

Ticket prices are insane, but they're gonna buy them.

They're gonna buy them.

They're gonna go on StubHub.

They're gonna go on Ticketmaster, and they're gonna buy them, and they're gonna wind up insane.

Uh, what numbers are we talking?

Up , upper bowl, uh, over $400 an upper bowl ticket, uh, lower bowl over $700.

Some case the lower section of $4500.

I mean, there's, there's just a lot of, these are very, very high priced tickets for this game.

It'll be interesting what the crowd looks like.

The Philly fans will not be allowed in Madison Square Garden.

The Garden fans.

They're gonna be tough out there.

Um, last thing that I want to talk about though, because we use the word referendum on the Celtics.

Um, we both agree that this series was not a referendum on their way.

Oh, I mean, like, I do think Boston should change the way they play a little bit, maybe not shoot so many threes.

Um, but they'll be back, uh.