About 40 minutes after Game 6 was over, Al Horford sat in the corner of the visiting locker room at Madison Square Garden eating a slice of pizza.
Who cares about proper nutrition at this point, right?
The Celtics no longer have to worry about the right foods at the right time or saying no to a late night adult beverage (although they played Game 6 like they still had a few in their system). The season is over.
“Finishing in May feels weird,” Jaylen Brown said. “It’s definitely not something we were prepared for.”
Add it to the list.
The Celtics did not seem prepared for a lot in their semifinal series with the Knicks. They choked away two 20 point leads and led another loss by 14 in the third quarter. They were the basketball embodiment of Worthy Rent-A-Car, the place that didn't have the car Jerry Seinfeld reserved.
They knew how to take a lead, they just didn't know how to hold a lead. And that's really the most important part of the lead. The holding.
“To me, it's not about our guys. They did everything they could,” Joe Mazzulla said. “You've got to tip your hats off to the Knicks. They played a great series. They've been great all year. (Tom Thibodeau) is a great coach. So you've got to tip your hat off to them.”
I don’t think Celtics fans are in the mood to respectfully doff a cap to the opponent just yet. New York went oh-fer against all three 60-win teams in the NBA this season, but they have currently out-lasted two of them and they could add the third if Denver beats OKC tomorrow night. It’s been a weird postseason so far, but champions are supposed to have some level of immunity to weird results. They said all season long they know what it takes to win, yet they didn’t do whatever that was.
“It almost feels worse,” Brown said of losing after having won a title. “We were trying to do something special, go back-to-back. We had a great group, we played well all year, so I think this probably stings even more.”
What should sting the most is the plane ride home. This group was largely unchanged from last season, a rare feat in modern sports. But that's going to change in a big way this summer. The league doesn’t like expensive teams with long runs of contending for titles, so the Celtics are about to crack under the weight of the new CBA.
Houses are about to start hitting the market.
“It sucks. You’ll never get this season back,” Derrick White said. “You’re never going to have the exact same team again. So obviously there were some highs and obviously some lows of the season, but at the moment it’s just kinda down.”
It’s a feeling that should stay with these guys for a while. Opportunities to win at this level are fleeting, so letting one slide by this way feels like a big deal.
“Losing to the Knicks feels like death,” Brown said. “But I was always taught that there’s life after death, so we’ll get ready for whatever’s next in the journey.”
The Celtics won’t be able to duplicate what they had these past two seasons. This loss officially moved them into the next phase of the Jayson Tatum/Jaylen Brown era. Brad Stevens has to re-tool the roster, bargain hunting in some areas, taking calculated risks in others.
Life over the second apron was fine this season but it won’t be moving forward. The Celtics need to shed a lot of salary because standing pat at the trade deadline is probably no longer an option. They need to be able to tinker with the fit around their stars, whenever it might be that they have both stars available.
“I know Boston, it looks gloomy right now, obviously with JT being out and us kind of ending the year, but it’s a lot to look forward to,” Brown said. “I want the city to feel excited about that. This is not the end so I'm looking forward to what's next.”
He might be right, but now is probably not the time for bright-eyed optimism. We’re still in wallowing territory. The mourning of this team might take a couple of days, even if it comes off as angry, “trade everybody” screaming.
There's no way around it. This was a missed opportunity and history should treat it as such. The corner of 38th and 8th should not have been ripped to shreds by celebrating Knicks fans, most of whom get to watch their team in late-May for the first time in their lives. It should have been ripped to shreds by angry Knicks fans who couldn't handle losing to Boston again.
I walked past that crowd on my way out of Madison Square Garden. Some joined me on the E train platform, waiting as the rats danced in and out of tracks. Faint “Knicks in Six!” chants still wafted through the air.
When I got off the train, I thought about that pizza Al was eating and decided to get myself a slice. I’m working things from the other end of the spectrum, ready to start counting calories and getting more active now that games and practices are done. This one last slice was my acknowledgement that we’re done here, and that it’s time to move on.
As I walked up to the pizza joint I remembered from my time living near this neighborhood, I noticed a distinct lack of people.
They were closed.
Man, nothing went right tonight.