The defending champion Celtics will fight on, but it’s impossible to ignore that everything’s changed
“I think everybody’s kind of at a loss for words, just because, not losing the game, but obviously with JT. But we pick our heads back up tomorrow and go from there.”
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Suddenly here we are, longing for those innocent times when we thought the worst-case scenario for the Celtics meant falling behind the Knicks, three games to one.
Turns out there is a far crueler fate than blowing a double-digit lead in an eventual loss for the third time in this series, as the Celtics happened to do in the Knicks’ 121-113 victory in Game 4 of their Eastern Conference semifinals series Monday night at Madison Square Garden.
After blowing 20-point leads in Games 1 and 2 at TD Garden, the Celtics followed with a that’s-more-like-it 115-93 victory in Game 3 at MSG before putting their championship defense on the brink by squandering a 14-point third quarter lead in Game 4. Jalen Brunson did most of the damage, cooking the suddenly vulnerable Celtics defense for 39 points. It felt like 59.
Yet when it was over, the loss was nowhere near the forefront of anyone’s mind.
A bigger loss, one with obvious, possibly devastating implications to both the franchise’s present and future, became the only thing that mattered with 2 minutes and 58 seconds remaining in the fourth quarter.
That’s when Jayson Tatum lunged for a Jaylen Brown fumble — it’s hard to tell if it was an errant pass or a botched dribble, which sums up Brown’s Game 4 performance — collapsed to the court and clutched his right heel, writhing and half-spinning in agony.
The instant hope was that he had rolled his ankle, and the pain would soon subside. Now-humorous memories of Paul Pierce in his ultimately unnecessary wheelchair during the 2008 NBA Finals flickered briefly.
It quickly became apparent this was not the kind of circumstance where coach Joe Mazzulla could yell, “Get up!,” as he did when Tatum remained on the floor after hurting his wrist in the first-round series versus the Magic.
As Tatum continued to writhe and pound the floor, anyone who ever put the sole of a sneaker to hardwood came to the same horrible realization:
Oh no. That looks like an Achilles’.
The last time we saw Tatum on ESPN‘s broadcast, the most durable of NBA superstars was being pushed down the hallway in a wheelchair, tears streaming down his cheeks. Mazzulla said Tatum would have an MRI on Tuesday morning. We wait not with suspense, but dread at the expected confirmation of the lousy news.
“We know what this is,” said Brian Scalabrine on NBC Sports Boston’s postgame show.
In the aftermath, Celtics players spoke solemnly about their concern for their teammate, their tenuous grasp on their season a distant afterthought.
“The game stuff, we’ll address it,” said Al Horford, whom Tatum has called a mentor and his all-time favorite teammate. “I’m just hoping that he’s OK.”
Said Brown, the longest-tenured Celtic and Tatum’s fellow cornerstone on the ’24 champs: “I think everybody’s kind of at a loss for words, just because, not losing the game, but obviously with JT. But we pick our heads back up tomorrow and go from there.”
Through the first half of Game 4, it felt like the Celtics, even with the propensity for punting away leads in this series, had an excellent chance of going back to Boston for Wednesday’s Game 5 even — largely because of Tatum.
He came out scorching in the first quarter, scoring 15 points on 6 of 8 shooting, while sidekick Derrick White contributed 14 and buried all four of his 3-point attempts. Tatum became a little too 3-point dependent in the second half, making 1 of 6 in the third quarter, but his overall performance — 42 points on 16 of 28 shooting, 8 rebounds, 4 steals, and 4 assists — was nothing short of stellar.
On a night when Brown was loose with the ball and fell into his never-quite-dormant habit of forcing shots, Kristaps Porzingis wore a bull’s eye on defense, and 30-somethings Jrue Holiday and Al Horford combined for 9 points, Tatum had to do the heavy lifting. The league’s most unfairly maligned superstar was up for it.
We can’t even wonder when we’ll see a performance like that again, because we don’t even know when we’ll see him again.
It’s possible the combination of adrenaline, a home crowd, and a champion’s pride lead to the Celtics winning Game 5. But their biggest dream this season — to become the first team to repeat as champion since the 2017-18 Golden State Warriors — is bound to fade away to wherever unfulfilled dreams go.
White and Holiday and Horford and Payton Pritchard will fight, and the ailing Porzingis will burn the drops of fuel left in his tank. Brown will fight too, of course, but I worry about the temptation to try to do too much. The Knicks will be just fine with that.
The mental quest to find a way for the Celtics to stick around beyond another game or two isn’t yielding anything based in reality.
No one is in the mood right now to ponder the ramifications of Monday night to the Celtics’ future, but we all know it ain’t great. We’ll talk about new ownership and the second apron and who stays and who goes when there are no more games to be played.
The Celtics have at least one more as defending NBA champions. The lights are still on in our Garden. The season isn’t over, not now, not yet.
But with 2 minutes, 58 seconds left Monday night, everything changed.
I already miss who the Celtics were a yesterday or two ago.
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