At Long Last, The Celtics Season From Hell Has Come To An End

Nathaniel S. Butler. Getty Images.

Well, the 2020-21 Boston Celtics will not be winning the NBA championship. File this one in the same place as the other 33 of 34 years of my life. After what was a long, often disastrous and mostly underachieving season from hell, the pain is over. A season riddled with inconsistent play, covid, injuries, and a whole lot of frustration is not done. It's an odd feeling really. I've seen a lot of disappointing Celtics seasons in my day, but this one in particular has more of a "what if" feeling simply because we never got to see it. Regular season, playoffs, didn't matter. The fact that they were able to compete in as many games as they did, including tonight, was somewhat impressive. Make no mistake, they got their ass whooped, but this was not a team that quit. Oh newsflash Jayson Tatum isn't going to single handedly beat a superteam. Whatever. Dude averaged 30+ and showed up in each of the last 3 games. His play in this series is more encouraging than anything else. Guy is a stud. Period. 

On a night where you needed everyone to be perfect, they were anything but. Nobody could really hit a shot all night, and I don't know if you know this but to beat the Nets you have to score. A lot. You go 11-40 from three, you can pretty much kiss your season goodbye. Looking for a positive at this particular moment? Romeo looked great. That three point shot is real. I look forward to seeing what he looks like with his first ever actual offseason. One would think he would improve.

The Celts started off the year great, Tatum got covid and they never really found their footing from there. Kemba and Rob ending up not being healthy at the playoffs was always the biggest fear, and both came true. That shit happens. While we will never know what that team might have looked like, we do know the one we got was nowhere near good enough. That's the biggest takeaway for me from this season. Not good enough. From Ainge, to Brad, to the players. 

But at least they went down swinging. The Celts now enter one of the most important offseasons in recent memory. You do this shit in a condensed season, that's one thing. You don't stop the bleeding and turn things around quickly in a more normal year, you then have a much bigger problem on your hands. 

So RIP 2020-21 season. Let us never speak of you again.