No NBA champion has advanced past the second round of the following postseason since the 2018-19 Golden State Warriors. No team has lifted the Larry O'Brien Trophy in consecutive campaigns since Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant, and Co. did it in 2017-18.
The Boston Celtics assembled one of the most talented teams in modern NBA history. That group went 80-21 in a dominant season that delivered Banner 18 to the TD Garden rafters.
Then came the rare feat of retaining nearly their entire roster. Fifteen of the seventeen players with the Celtics as they reached the NBA summit, including those on two-way deals, returned.
But Boston's geographical rival dashed its dream of another championship parade.
[Boston Celtics guard Jaylen Brown (7) walks off the court after losing to the New York Knicks.
Brad Penner-Imagn Images](https://hardwoodhoudini.com/painful-celtics-hope-recent-reality-tatum-brad-stevens-porzingis)
Even before Jayson Tatum fell to the floor at Madison Square Garden, suffering a torn Achilles that clouds his and the franchise's future, the New York Knicks were on the verge of seizing a 3-1 series lead.
OG Anunoby scooped up the loose ball that Tatum was pursuing on the play where the injury occurred. His breakaway dunk extended the hosts' lead to 113-104 with 3:03 remaining.
Perhaps the Celtics would've come back. However, it was more likely that they didn't. Rallying from a 3-1 deficit with a healthy Tatum was also possible, but less likely than the Knicks reaching the Eastern Conference Finals for the first time since 2000.
"I’d rather talk about all the CBA [collective bargaining agreement], and all that crap," joked Brad Stevens at Monday's end-of-season press conference. After voicing he wished to wait to discuss what's to come for the franchise until he speaks when the draft arrives, "the first 10 questions were on it – you guys are terrible students," he remarked.
"The reality is we blew the first two games, and that's why we put ourselves in a tough spot. I realized, and we all realized, listen, these leads go fast and these games go fast. Yes, you can win when you're down 2-0, but you just diminished your margin for error. There's going to be games like ours in Game 5, where we go nuts and we're hard to beat that night. Or ours in Game 3, where we're hard to beat that night. But that just ties it. And you still have to do it two more times.
"That's not on any one person, that's not out of a maliciousness, that's not a bad decision, it's not bad luck – we had opportunities to win those first two home games and we put ourselves behind the 8-ball. New York gained what I thought was not only confidence but momentum, and they are peaking. You can see it. And so, I think all four teams that are playing in these semi-finals deserve to be there. Any of the four could win it. But, credit New York for the way they played and the way they came back in those two games specifically."
What prevented the Celtics from reaching their ultimate goal?
After a series that started with squandering two 20-point leads in the second half of Games 1 and 2 on their parquet, Stevens shared his assessment of why the Celtics didn't end this season in the same fashion as a year ago.
"Well, I mean, again, sometimes it's as simple as those are the margins," said Stevens. "We lost an overtime game at home in Game 1, and a game by one point in Game 2 that we were up 16, 18, 20, with 15 minutes to go in the game. So, that's the margin of error that you're dealing with. And so, I think that those are all things that you appreciate when you can go on deep runs like we did last year and ultimately win it, because some things have to go your way.
"I've said many times, we could easily have been up 3-1 when Jayson got hurt. But the reality is, we were probably not winning that game anyway, so we were going to be down 3-1. Last year, in the Indiana series, they could have easily been up 3-1 on us. And I think that's just kind of these series. You get these opportunities, and one team takes advantage of them, and that team usually moves on. And the Knicks did that. And again, they deserve credit for that. They've been amazing late in games, and certainly played a lot of those in the Detroit series, and showed it against us."
That ability to out-execute a championship team when it mattered most is at the root of why the Celtics are in the unfamiliar position of seeing their season end before the Eastern Conference Finals.
They're now on to a summer of uncertainty, with Stevens sharing what the franchise following its north star requires.