For the first time since the 2020-21 season, the Boston Celtics won’t be playing in the second round of the NBA playoffs.
A historic collapse ensured that.
They became the first team in franchise history to blow a 3-1 series lead after going a perfect 32-0 in those situations, and just the 14th team in NBA history to do so. They led by 13 with 10:13 remaining in the third quarter of Game 5, but were outscored by 49 points over the rest of the series.
So, what went wrong?
Eleven-year NBA veteran and NBC Sports Boston Celtics analyst Brian Scalabrine joined Rich and Ken with Ted Johnson to try to make sense of the collapse (full audio below).
“It does feel like when they get up big, they kind of let their foot off the gas or they go away from what got them there,” Scalabrine said. “That’s where you would hope they would learn their lesson from last year.”
In case you forgot, last postseason, the Celtics led by 20 points at home in both Games 1 and 2, only to lose them both, becoming the first team in the play-by-play era (since 1996-97) to lose multiple postseason games after leading by 20 or more. This year, they became just the second team ever to lose a playoff series despite multiple 30-point wins.
“This year was one of my favorite teams to cover, by far. I was all-in. Love Joe [Mazzulla] with the margins. They hustled, they created turnovers, they took care of the ball, they offensive rebound, they don’t foul – they do everything that you want them to do. I thought the restrictions of not being that good allowed them to be great,” Scalabrine added. “All the restrictions of man, we’re not going to have this guy, this guy, and that guy, all of a sudden, it allowed them to grow. But then, when we got to the playoffs, we lost our identity.”
Scalabrine thinks the Celtics, who since 2019 had recorded three first-round sweeps and two gentleman’s sweeps, expected more of the same after building a 3-1 lead, a mindset that ultimately proved costly.
“I felt like they played with a little bit of arrogance,” he said. “Like, of course we’re going to win, we’re Boston. We always win. This is two years in a row. We’re 2-5 in our last seven games on our home court. That’s really disappointing when you think about it.”
