Exits: Gap year

The Celtics find themselves in an unexpected offseason of turbulence. Will they be willing to be transformed, or break?

The series started off so well.

High on the beginning of spring and the start of a yet another playoff series in Boston, we spent money we didn’t have on tickets to Game 1. The baby wore green, noise-canceling headphones; she looked like a tiny DJ, ready to party all night. I took a photo of her wearing them, safe in her dad’s arms, looking down from the nosebleeds toward the parquet below. The headphones lasted all of two minutes, and the baby herself didn’t last much longer.

I spent most of the game — a 32-point victory for the Cs — walking the baby around the concession area and nursing her in a windowless First Aid station that, at TD Garden, doubles as a lactation room. Occasionally, I glanced at one of the TVs that lined the walls. I was lucky to catch Jayson Tatum’s two-handed dunk, a play that suggested the star we all knew was, finally, back.

In truth, I didn’t mind missing the decisive victory. I figured there’d be another close game on its heels. Also, as the parent of a nine-month-old, I was used to missing out.

I hadn’t seen much basketball during the regular season. Celtics games tend to start at 7:30 p.m, a time when I was nursing the baby, soothing her to sleep, or resettling her during what, in the baby sleep world, is charmingly called a “false start.” By the time I left the pitch-black bedroom, it was almost invariably halftime. By the time play started again, the baby was almost always up. It was like she knew that, after spending an entire day with her practically sutured to my body, I wanted a couple hours alone.

But if there were a season to miss, I reasoned, it was this one. The Celtics weren’t going to be good. Jayson Tatum was out, recovering from a ruptured Achilles tendon. He wasn’t the only star from the 2024 championship team who was gone. In an effort to get under the second apron, Brad Stevens had traded Jrue Holiday — a dependable veteran guard — to the Portland Trail Blazers for Anfernee Simons, a speedy shooting guard who would himself be traded, come February, for Nikola Vučević of the Bulls. Kristaps Porzingis had been traded before the season started as part of the team’s salary dumping strategy. Al Horford had absconded to the Warriors. Even the funny and dependable Luke Kornet, the only NBA center in history to blog about Catholic churches, was gone; he had signed with the San Antonio Spurs and had quickly become what he’d been on the Celtics: a locker room presence par excellence.

Who remained? Finals MVP Jaylen Brown, now definitively a first option; the underrated Derrick White; Sixth Man of the Year Payton Pritchard; and a bunch of young guys whose names few people knew. They were hungry, the young guys, eager to earn playing minutes and what the Celtics broadcast team calls “Tommy Points” — named after the inimitable Tommy Heinsohn, they are given for hustle — but they couldn’t make up for all the talent and experience lost during the offseason. The Celtics weren’t going to tank, since head coach Joe Mazzulla is constitutionally incapable of losing on purpose, but they also weren’t going to compete for a championship. They were going to be a play-in team, maybe a sixth seed. People were calling it “the gap year.”

Preoccupied and sleep deprived, I let myself lean into apathy. I spent little time on the Celtics subreddit. I rarely checked a box score. I made myself watch game highlights on mornings when I felt awake enough to focus, but I almost never feel awake these days, and such mornings were few and far between. When my Celtics group chat debated the relative merits of Hugo Gonzalez, Baylor Scheierman, and Jordan Walsh, I found I had little to contribute. Instead, with the narcissism of the new parent, I sent my friends a steady stream of baby pictures and videos. They humored me, responding with the requisite heart emojis, and continued to talk among themselves.

Then suddenly it was spring, and the baby was crawling, and the Celtics were, supposedly, good. They were the #2 team in the East: a weak conference, for sure, but one that included the best Knicks team in decades. Brown had emerged as a leader, averaging nearly 30 points a game, and putting himself in the running for regular season MVP. Pritchard continued to hit astounding three-pointers. Rumor had it that Tatum was coming back — and by rumor, I mean Amica’s “Back to Zero” ad campaign, which featured video footage of Tatum rehabbing his leg while various clocks ticked down to zero.

The Celtics ended the season with the NBA’s second-best offense, its fourth-best defense, and historically good rim protection, allowing their opponents to take only 20.8% of their shots at the rim. Could Portuguese seven-footer Neemias Queta really be the center on a championship-contending team? Apparently, he could be.

When it comes to professional sports, Bostonians are spoiled, greedy. We expect championships every season, and we laugh at teams that celebrate when they win a division or conference. (I’m looking at you, 2025 Knicks.) By the time Tatum was listed as “questionable” on the injury report, we figured we were, once again, championship bound.

Never mind that Tatum looked absolutely gassed during his first games back; or that the starting lineup included three-point specialist Sam Hauser, a player best used sparingly; or that some of the difference-making young guys lost their playing time once Tatum was back in the lineup. Fans figured there was enough time for the team to gel before the playoffs began. And besides, the Celtics were starting off against the 76ers, a team they had, historically, owned.

Photo credit Brian Fluharty

Not this time.

The Cs lost Game 2 at home to a faster, hungrier Sixers group that included the impressive rookie V.J. Edgecombe and the lightning-fast Tyrese Maxey. Then Joel Embiid returned from his appendectomy, a change that I, foolishly, thought would benefit the Celtics, since Embiid tends to slow the game down. But he played remarkably well against the Celtics bigs, and before I knew it, a 3-1 series lead had disappeared.

Tatum, overcompensating and overly cautious, felt some pain in his non-injured leg and decided to sit for Game 7. The Celtics fell behind early, managed a comeback, then lost by nine. It was a dismal end to a season that, at least for a time, had seemed like it would be more memorable than it was.

Try as I might, I still can’t explain the collapse fully. Did Tatum’s return mess with the Celtics’ chemistry? Or was the team’s fate sealed when he failed to suit up for Game 7? Did Mazzulla, an ardent Catholic and self-confessed masochist, fail to make necessary adjustments, preferring instead to leave things in God’s hands? Or does the fault lie with Brown, who fought gutsily throughout Game 7, but whose play always seems a little out of sync with the rest of the offense?

Or, as Stevens suggested at the post-season press conference, was the roster simply not that good?

Listening to Stevens, I thought of how hard it is to see those we love clearly. When I look at the baby in my lap, she looks to me like the most perfect child ever created. I don’t think I’m capable of seeing her otherwise.

At the same presser, Stevens implied that big changes are coming. Brown, bafflingly, called this season the most fun he’d had as a player, leading some to predict that his days as a Celtic are numbered. Giannis Antetokounmpo has been publicly campaigning to come to Boston, and although it’s hard to see exactly how his game would mesh with Tatum’s, it’s also hard to see how the Celtics get better while staying committed to the Jays. It could well be the end of an era, the severing of a star duo that has alternately quieted doubters and incited debate.

The prospect makes me a bit sad: I’m a Taurus, after all, and resistant to change. But this past year — my own gap year — has been one change after another, and I’ve become a bit more accepting of turbulence, slightly more willing to be transformed.

Some days I slip on my old clothes and sit down to work, and I feel just like I did a few years ago, as if nothing about myself or my life has changed. But then I hear the baby keening, or I catch her smiling her gummy smile, and I realize that nothing will ever be the same.