The people in this building wanted it.
I mean, they REALLY wanted it.
TD Garden buzzed with excitement. Paul Pierce stood on the parquet and hyped up the crowd half an hour before the tip. Fans sang along with the anthem. They watched a hype video comparing the Celtics to the 2004 Red Sox and roared when Derrick White’s Game 6 buzzer beater was shown as if it had just happened. Jayson Tatum popped his jersey before the tip, whipping the crowd into a deeper frenzy, and then the crowd erupted when the ball bounced around after the opening jump and ultimately fell into Jaylen Brown’s hands.
History was on the line. The Celtics had already done something special getting here. The 19,156 in the building, minus a few people who made the trip from Miami, were ready to witness it all.
Boston started strong enough, but it didn’t take long for it to become clear that this wasn’t going to be the night everyone had hoped it would be.
“I thought we were tight. I thought we played tight,” Malcolm Brogdon said “When you play that way, it makes you hesitant on both ends of the ball. I thought Miami played the opposite. I thought they played loose.”
The only thing loose about the Celtics was Brown’s handle. With Tatum hobbled after an ankle sprain and Brown handing out halloween candy to the Heat, the crowd went from cheering plays, to cheering at random points of the game hoping to inspire the team, to silence, and finally boos.
“In the beginning of that fourth I feel like guys finally kind of started getting discouraged,” Al Horford said. “I felt like that was a critical point. We had a few turnovers there. We just couldn't kind of muster anything going.”
Boston took 42 3-pointers, more than enough for the math to work out. At the league average of 36%, Boston should have hit 15. It would have been 16 if they hit at their own season average. Instead they hit 9. The Panda Celtics, who survive solely on 3-point shooting like it was bamboo, were back after a night off.
Now they head into hibernation. They will splinter off, find a beach somewhere, drown their sorrows in some tropical drinks, and dwell on what could have been.
This year’s exit was a little more upbeat than last season’s. The pain of losing a championship on your home floor probably adds to the misery they couldn't feel in this game, but the Celtics left the TD Garden for the last time this season feeling okay about themselves.
“We had a lot going on this year,” Horford said. “Our guys should hold their heads high because we had a lot of adversity. In that locker room we dealt with a lot of things. Our group was very professional all year, worked really hard … It's disappointing that we didn't get our results. We failed. We failed. Because we wanted to win a championship. That was our goal. But despite that I'm very proud of that group because there was never any excuse. We went through ups and downs, but we stuck with it.”
They now head into an offseason full of questions. The new collective bargaining agreement has thrown the front office a massive curveball, and the full ramifications of how this will impact the team still aren’t fully clear.
Opportunities like this don’t come along often. The Denver Nuggets are about to do what the Celtics could not: take advantage of an opportunity in front of them. The Celtics will look back on this spring with regret, because they will be hit hard by a rule aimed at hurting someone else.
Boston waited for the right opportunity to strike with its spending. They saw the opportunity last summer and they went from a non-tax team to a big-time spender. They finally decided to compete with Golden State and the LA Clippers and they pushed their chips all in.
But now the game is changing, and so will the Celtics.
As the early morning wore on inside TD Garden, with rally towels and peanut husks still littering the floor, a few remaining media members said their goodbyes to colleagues rarely in town for something other than a big playoff series like this. A few took selfies on the logo before leaving the building for at least a few months. NBA basketball will continue to be played, but not in this building.
Who knows what this team will look like when it resumes, but it will probably be very different because it will almost have to be. And when the reality of that sets in, maybe then they’ll know the opportunity they missed.
The old Celtics training room used to have a quote on the wall: “What hurts more? The pain of hard work, or the pain of regret?”
I’m afraid they might find that answer soon.
