The Boston Celtics have a ton of talent on their roster.
But do they have the killer instinct necessary to win an NBA championship?
It’s fair to wonder after Boston crumbled (again) Tuesday night at TD Garden in a 119-117 loss to the Atlanta Hawks in Game 5 of the teams’ first-round NBA playoff series. The Celtics led by 13 points midway through the fourth quarter, with a chance to close out the Hawks and secure a second-round date with the Philadelphia 76ers, yet Boston couldn’t seal the deal. Instead, Trae Young drilled a dagger 3-pointer with 1.8 seconds remaining to lift Atlanta to victory.
“They lost the first quarter in a close-out game at home. You can’t do things (like that),” Former NBA point guard-turned-analyst Jay Williams said Wednesday on ESPN’s “Get Up” of the Celtics’ collapse. “I would think a team like Boston, who got to the NBA Finals last year, who had the performances like Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown did, even with what happened at the beginning of the season with Ime Udoke no longer being their coach (and) Joe Mazzulla taking over, I would’ve thought they would’ve entered the playoffs with a lot more venom, with a lot more passion.
” … Watching the way they finished out this game without Dejounte Murray playing (for the Hawks), this series going back to Atlanta, it makes me worry about their next-round series against the Philadelphia 76ers.”
The Celtics aren’t necessarily in trouble — yet. They still hold a 3-2 series lead, and they’ve looked like the superior team for large stretches of the best-of-seven set. It’s concerning, though, that Boston keeps letting Atlanta hang around. And now, the Hawks will host Game 6 on their home floor Thursday night with a chance to force a winner-take-all Game 7 back at TD Garden.
If nothing else, the Celtics’ inability to put away the Hawks could foreshadow trouble in the next round, where they’d face the 76ers, or further down the road. Boston, as Williams mentioned, came up short in the NBA Finals last season, losing to the Golden State Warriors in six games.
“I do think they’ll close it out in Atlanta, but I have serious concerns, even watching Robert Williams, understanding even though Joel Embiid has a right sprained knee, the kind of force that he brings to the table and the lack of aggressiveness (from the Celtics),” Jay Williams said. “Guys used to compete on Boston for who was the best defensive player last year. You used to hear these stories and these rumblings coming from their team about Marcus Smart, Jaylen Brown, Jayson Tatum, remember what he did to Kevin Durant last year in their playoff series, I don’t have that same feel from this Boston team.”
Maybe Tuesday night’s meltdown will serve as a wakeup call for the Celtics, who’ve been one of the NBA’s best teams throughout the 2022-23 season. Then again, they’ve had inexplicable hiccups before, so perhaps it’s simply in their DNA.
