The Boston Celtics Lost. Is It the End of Another NBA Era?

The elimination of the Boston Celtics on Friday, May 17 to the New York Knicks in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference Semifinals, 119-81, marks seven straight NBA seasons without a repeat champion. And could mark the end of the current Celtics era.

After winning an NBA championship in 2024, the Celtics essentially brought back the same roster this year. Which in addition to being a rare opportunity for a championship team, at the time seemed like a no brainer, according to Jared Weiss, a staff writer at The Athletic.

The way the regular season went, it still seemed like the right decision. But then the team hit a wall hard in May, Weiss says. Various injuries and one illness took all the depth that had made the Celtics seem untouchable over the previous 19 months. And without the new-player spark that past champions have applied as a fresh coat of paint.

When the Celtics lost the Kristaps Porzingis factor (due to a lingering upper-respiratory illness), they suddenly looked like the old Celtics again. Unable to run offense in the fourth quarter and sometimes showing up to games a level below their opponent.

In Game 6 of the recent series against the Knicks it was hard to distinguish what their guiding principles were.

Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla’s style of basketball has more depth to it than just spamming 3-pointers, Weiss says. But a lot of his schematic approach has been the circumstance of roster construction.

The team was groundbreaking last season in its ability to put together an eight-man rotation in which everyone could shoot and create. No team had ever done it so comprehensively in quite the same way.

Under Mazzulla, they also augmented and tuned to perfection a trend of “cross-match hunting.” A defensive strategy in which a team intentionally creates mismatches by shifting players to guard opponents who are less suited to their usual position. Thereby exploiting opponents’ weaknesses and disrupting their offensive flow.

The NBA evolves in quick cycles—sometimes as short as three years, Weiss says. Teams always follow the lead of the champion. But now, that’s not the Celtics anymore.

Still, the team left its mark on the league, Weiss says, embracing the theory behind high-volume 3s in a way no team had before. They gave analytical theory character and purpose, as much as they might be derided for it.