The Never Weres

It is not a fun morning to be a Celtics fan. I understand that, as I write this, it has been less than a year since the Celtics won the NBA Finals. So boo-hoo for me. Well, stop reading, and thanks for the click if you feel that way. The rest of my self-pity pals, let’s work through it.

Jayson Tatum’s playoffs are over (although that was probably only one or two more games), and if what all of our non-trained eyes saw is true, so is his 2025-2026 season. This is the darkest of the clouds hanging over the TD Garden.

In what looked like an Achilles tear, the Celtics lost one of the top-five players in the NBA at the absolute height of his career. Coming off an NBA championship, he had his best season this year, and at the time of the injury, he was in the middle of a 42/8/4. People love to clown on Tatum, but every one of those fan bases would want him on their team.

If you can work your way through the fog and darkness of the Tatum injury, you will be face-to-face with the Celtics in a 3-1 hole to the Knicks. A team they are better than; in a series that should have gone a different way (please see the game log for games one and two). With the way the playoffs are shaking out, the Celtics really missed an opportunity to be the first team to repeat since the 17-18 Warriors.

The Celtics shrank in critical moments in all three of their losses. They had double-digit leads in each of those games. Double-digit leads in the second half of each game. They never recovered from second-half runs by New York. The offense got stagnant when the score got close (for us who watched them closely all year, it was a trend throughout the season). Boston would play one way to build a lead and completely abandon it when the Knicks started chipping away.

The Celtics lost their superpower. Last season, as they sprinted past the competition all season long and had the fourth-best net rating of all time (it is now fifth because of the Thunder this year), Kristaps Porzingis gave them a weapon no one else had. A seven-footer who could shoot outside, destroy mismatches in the paint, and provide rim protection on the other end.

Porzingis wasn’t the same this year. He had a freak injury in the Finals last year and missed the start of this season. He was in and out of the lineup for most of the year. When he finally got into the lineup regularly toward the end of the year, he suffered a mysterious illness that has plagued him since. Watching him in these playoffs, it seems his health is still affecting him.

These issues forecast an off-season in which a championship team will most likely be broken up. They are way over the second apron tax threshold, have aging role-players signed to big contracts, and without their All-NBA forward in Tatum, they don’t have a realistic shot at contending next season.

The Celtics look to follow in the footsteps of the 19-20 Toronto Raptors, 21-22 Milwaukee Bucks, 22-23 Golden State Warriors, and the 23-24 Denver Nuggets. Four of the last five defending champions lost in the second round. The 2021 Lakers lost in the first round. Not since the third year of the Curry-Durant Warriors in 2019, who lost in the Finals to the Raptors, has a defending champ made at least the Conference Finals.

There is no other way to look at this season. The Celtics blew a chance to repeat. Repeating is very hard to do. The season was still enjoyable, and Tatum was special. These things can be true even if there isn’t a championship to show for it. Next summer may come even quicker for the Celtics based on Tatum’s injury. All we can hope for at this point is that he can get back to the caliber he played at this year. If he does, the championship window will open again.

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