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The numbers underpinning this Boston Celtics playoff run, once again, are staggering. Three straight Eastern Conference finals appearances. Four appearances in the past five seasons, six in the past eight. A postseason net rating of 12.8—even better than their historic regular-season number of 11.7. That is the highest figure since the 2016-17 Warriors outscored their opponents by 12.9 points per 100 possessions amid their dominant championship campaign, sealed in just 17 games. As the boss notes: Boston is 72-20 in 2023-24. Not bad at all.
Then there are the other numbers. After Wednesday’s series-clinching 113-98 win in Boston, the Celtics are now only barely above .500 in home playoff games over the past three playoff runs, at 15-14. Four of the seven best-of-seven series the Celtics played in the previous two postseasons went to seven games. The Celtics have had problems with handling business at home. Head coach Joe Mazzulla downplayed the issue: “I haven’t put any thought into it at all,” he told reporters during the series against the Cavaliers. But the significance of Boston’s Game 5 victory at TD Garden wasn’t lost on Al Horford, the game-ball hero whose steady leadership is woven right into the parquet-patterned tapestry of these charmed, bittersweet past eight years.
“We all wanted this so bad, and I’m just happy that we were able to take advantage of this,” Horford said after the game. “In the past, we’ve been in this position and haven’t been able to take advantage of those things, and this is a big step.”
The team is, sensibly, taking things one game at a time. That’s what they’re conditioned to tell us, at least. But for stretches in each of the past four games of their second-round series against Cleveland, the Celtics offense returned to bad habits, and their defense went through the motions. The team’s engagement was frequently dictated by the intensity of its opponent. Everyone’s mind is down the road. In multiple instances during the Inside the NBA broadcast, guest panelist Draymond Green—as is his wont—jumped ahead, citing potential future Celtics matchups against the Knicks and the Nuggets as if they were already etched in stone. After the game, moments before interviewing Jayson Tatum, Green bluntly exclaimed, “No one cares” when asked about the Celtics’ consistency in reaching the Eastern Conference finals yet again.
As Inside the NBA appears to be approaching an untimely end, I return to the mantra that TNT, for decades, used to frame its network ethos—and to stake its unique privilege in broadcasting the spectacle of postseason basketball. We know drama. “What is drama?” Spike Lee asked, in a TNT promo ushering in the 2004 NBA playoffs. “It’s not scripted. There’s always a chance that something extraordinary is going to happen. You wouldn’t believe it if someone hadn’t told you that it was a true story. It happens, it happens, it happens …”
This Celtics run has been a protracted state of awaiting—for fans, for detractors, for the team itself. Call it joyless, call it the easiest path to the NBA Finals in four decades, and Celtics fans might rush in to defend, but in an obligatory manner befitting an older sibling defending their kid brother more than an outright denial. They have the birthright to cast aspersions; you don’t. What we can all agree on is that it feels like only a matter of time before the Celtics reach their destiny as the Eastern representative in the Finals. There is a distinct void at the heart of that sentiment: Whatever it is, it isn’t sports, really. It’s clock-watching.
That is in stark contrast to their likely conference final foe in the Knicks, who lay their destiny at Jalen Brunson’s tired feet, who hurtle their bodies into the morass of the restricted area to fight for extended possessions because there is no time to lose. They treat basketball as a struggle whose reward is a catharsis born of all-out exhaustion. Drama is a six-game first-round series wherein the total scoring margin is a single point; it is the tension between expectation and the anxiety that powers suspense. It is as Spike says: a belief in the chance that something extraordinary can happen. It is the missing link in the Celtics campaign, which feels more and more like a failure of storytelling than anything grounded in basketball. What’s missing is immersion—the mind-body investment in the forward momentum of play. The stuff that makes great games feel like dream states. Of course, it’s hard to invoke that sensation without the right dance partner.
Growth may not be linear, but charting the success of the Celtics in the Tatum era draws as straight a line as is possible in the NBA. That has always been the promise of these Celtics teams: In talent, in construction, in leadership, the Celtics are as straightforward as it gets. And this particular group of players—should Kristaps Porzingis soon return healthy from his calf injury—is among the most talented in the franchise’s storied history. That the team regularly goes through stretches of aimless play feels illogical. Cataclysmically embarrassing blown leads feel akin to AI hallucinations. Their past eight years have been a kaleidoscope that has refracted success in every possible way other than the way that is undeniable. There is still an unresolved tension at play.
And that’s why the idea that the Celtics have had it easy is immaterial, even if it’s true. The Celtics’ first two series have resembled lopsided tennis matches more than basketball—the internal push and pull of an elite talent that supersedes the game itself. More bewildering than tense. Suspense powers the postseason, and every higher rung of competition presents new standards and parameters. What was suspenseful in a previous round becomes a dull inevitability in the next. There was a thrill in watching the fuck-you underdogs of Miami claw their way to the Finals last year, but there wasn’t enough talent to sustain the energy at the highest level.
If this Celtics team is what it has promised to be, all the tedium of these early stages will be worth it. The Knicks would present as ideal foils: a scrappy, fearless team bound by a uniquely integrated culture and an unexpected cult of personality—a mutation of the HEAT CULTURE bugaboo that has been a thorn in Boston’s side. Last season showed the perils of looking too far ahead—few had the Celtics going a full seven games against the Heat, never mind being the team that had to scrape its way back from a 3-0 hole. It was a series that proved to be a misallocation of faith in Boston—and losing trust is how unsavory reputations calcify. Even if it’s as a beleaguered shell of themselves, the Knicks would give the Celtics everything left to give.
What lies beyond that, only Draymond knows. Perhaps another chance of embarrassment, another opportunity for breakthrough. Hopefully another shot at selling some good drama for once.
