On a recent episode of his podcast, Mind the Game, Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James called out the biggest reason the Boston Celtics lost to the New York Knicks in this year’s playoffs: They got bored. “It seems like sometimes, it seems like they get bored sometimes with the — I don’t want to say the process. Because I mean, s***, they are who they are, and when you look at [Jayson] Tatum and [Jaylen] Brown, this is years and years and years and years, they’ve punched their 10,000 hours,” James said.
“But sometimes it seems like they get a little bored because of how great they are. Not only as those two as individuals, but them, as a team, sometimes it looks like they get bored.”
James and co-host Steve Nash, an NBA Hall-of-Famer, went on to state that boredom was a primary reason the Celtics blew the two 20-point leads they had in Games 1 and 2.
LeBron James is right about the Celtics (and fans have said it for years)
For years, fans have screamed about the Celtics getting bored. Last year, they avoided that fate, and it led to a championship. But it was painfully obvious what was happening in Games 1 and 2.
Their shot profiles were one thing. Perhaps they could have been a bit more intentional with the shots they got, honing in on the offensive process. The number of threes they took didn’t matter as much as the process that went into getting them.
Boston’s real boredom showed up on the defensive end. Down the stretch of both games, and in the other two losses, the Celtics failed to lock into the defensive details.
They got lost off the ball, completely failed to stop the Knicks in transition, and were a disaster on the defensive glass. It was a complete and utter mess.
Knicks deserve credit, but Celtics completely fumbled
None of this should be misconstrued as a way to take away from what the Knicks did. They made big plays when they needed to, and they wouldn’t have won the first two games of the series had they not.
However, the Celtics very clearly failed to execute the details of the game when it mattered most. If they had even succeeded in one of the areas mentioned—defensive rebounding, off-ball defense, or transition defense—the games could have had different outcomes.
The same could be said if they focused more on their offensive process.
But they didn’t. And now, the Knicks are in the Conference Finals while the Celtics are at home on their couches. (Or on vacation somewhere.)