The Boston Celtics are less than a week away from kicking off their 2025-26 NBA season at home against the Philadelphia 76ers. The Celtics will enter this season without injured star Jayson Tatum, who tore his Achilles during last year's playoff series vs the New York Knicks.
Lost in the reaction to Tatum's injury was the fact that the Celtics were most likely on their way to losing that series vs the Knicks either way, having blown not one but two 20-point leads in their first two games at home.
Recently, Celtics 2024 Finals MVP Jaylen Brown appeared on Netflix's “Starting Five” and spoke on the fallout from that loss.
“It's a part of the game. You have to accept both the highs and the lows. Last year, we were a championship team. We won the championship. Duckboats, champagne. This year we gotta listen to insufferable Knicks fans. I don’t know how we lost in general, but we lost,” said Brown, per CelticsGlobe on X, formerly Twitter.
An inexplicable loss for the Celtics
Heading into the series vs the Knicks, most pundits figured that the Celtics would send their friends from New York home in five games maximum. Instead, Boston forgot how to shoot the basketball in Games 1 and 2, melting down in crunch time in both contests, and proceeded to blow another 14-point lead in Game 4, which they were well on their way to losing prior to the Tatum injury.
This offseason, the Celtics cut their losses and traded both Jrue Holiday and Kristaps Porzingis in an effort to get under the second apron, paving the way for both Brown and Derrick White to have career years in 2025-26 with Tatum sidelined.
Considering the current state of the East, it's not off the board that the Celtics could still compete for a top-six seed in the conference if things go their way, and Tatum hasn't fully shut the door on potentially returning at some point this year.
In any case, the Celtics are set to kick off their 2025-26 regular season with a home game against the 76ers on October 22.
