The reality of the new NBA has caught the Celtics, which may have to find a new way

New York – Jayl Brown remembered the pain of losing, but this time something felt like something else.

He spent almost a decade with the title in his sights and came briefly every year until he finally pulled it off. Suddenly he went from a young star to the final MVP, the hero of championship history. It is the ultimate veneration, the highlight of sport.

Now Brown is back into reality, and another season in Boston Celtics is briefly available.

“S – it feels the same way. It feels almost worse,” said Brown. “We tried to do something special to go one after the other. We had a great group, we played well all year round, so I think that probably more.”

Welcome to the Parity era. The NBA was redesigned in this way. Repetition championships should now be damn almost impossible. The teams are threatened with a sea of ​​bureaucracy when they are bold enough to pay their players what they deserve. The second apron was designed to keep the teams on the mountain summit as short as possible and ensure that every season is a mystery.

It works. Since the New York Knicks were selected after the Celtics 119-81 on Friday and the Denver nuggets that were locked up in an epic battle by Oklahoma City Thunder and Denver, nobody knows who will win the title. The only thing that is repeated in June is novelty.

The excretion of the Celtics marks seven NBA games in a row without repeat master. They bravely fought in game 5 to bring this series back to New York, but they had nothing to offer. This game was a embarrassment, an ugly, disruptive coda for a team that played such thoughtful basketball in the last two seasons.

It is a real shame that this could be the last remains of these Celtics era. As Brown put it, the losing of the kinks feels like death. But there is life after death that is expecting who left in October.

Everyone in this changing room understands that things will look different in the next season. It remains to be seen whether the team has a dramatic overhaul or tinging optimization. The Celtics have many options from this off -season, especially depending on the projected restoration time bar for the Achilles surgery of Jayson Tatum.

They bought the same team back this season, which seemed like child's play. Championship teams can never do that. There is always someone you can't afford to earn a larger role elsewhere. Brad Stevens and his front office deserve an endless round of applause from spreadsheets in the entire league for their cap management, even if they knew that the second apron for their precious market value contracts would come.

But after this playoff run it is fair to ask if this was the right decision. The way the regular season went is easy to say.

But they hit a wall in May. Hard.

Various injuries (and an illness) different degrees took away all of this deep that made it untouchable in the past 19 months. You have not received this new player spark, which has always applied the fresh application for packing champions.

This is not a new phenomenon in the NBA. Repeating has always been difficult. The collective agreement makes it much more difficult. But the Celtics always had to overcome wear before external variables. That didn't happen. It didn't come close.

They lost the Porziis factor and suddenly looked like the old Celtics, who were unable to do offensive in the fourth quarter and sometimes only see a level under their opponent. It was difficult to distinguish the lead principles of Celtics in game 6. News will come anyway in the next season.

Although Joe Mazzulla's basketball style has more depth than just a 3-point spam, a large part of his schematic approach was the fact of the squad building. This team was groundbreaking last season and put together an eight -member rotation in which everyone could shoot and create. No team had made it onto the entire board in the same way.

Under Mazzulla, the Celtics expanded a trend of crossing the intersection and approved them perfectly. But this magic didn't last long. This was a whimper of a short era of innovation. The league develops in fast cycles, sometimes only three years. The Celtics used this era, but that could change soon, depending on how the next month of basketball will be released. The teams always follow the management of the champion, but these are no longer the Celtics.

If this is the last time we see this Celtics team as composed, it still left the traces of the NBA. This team included the theory behind High-Volume 3S in a way that no team had before. Mazzulla spent so much time to hammer the classic analytics mantra home, which was negotiated well before he became the latest figurehead. They gave analytical theory of character and purpose as much as they can be mocked.

Until last year, the Celtics had the habit of giving up large leads, which stalled constantly in the crunchime when the crime lost their river. Porzi was a fail -safe to go through these moments, which gave her crime so much clarity that it was also, even when he missed most of the post -season.

After two playoffs, mainly without the last year of the year in the spirit of the Celtics runs the result of the results in the spirit-die Celtics if they do not have their X factor. The little victories should come in here. The 50-50 balls that plays dynamics, that of Coach Speak Minutia that separate the best teams in the post-season.

“These are the things that, regardless of whether they work on them one day, two days, two years, three years, are things that they have to convert every day,” said Mazzulla.

The Celtics made a new model that worked in the league, but what happens to the original prototype if it is no longer the shiny new toy?

The rebrand is forced to the Celtics. Stevens has proven that he does not run back for the sake of simplicity. He was brave and methodical during his term, even if this was not the obvious step. Now it's the obvious step. It is not even a big choice, with the important restriction that Tatum is somehow ready for the playoffs next season. The team shouldn't plan that, but it cannot ignore it if it is there.

The Celtics spent the season as the defending champs that all wanted to lose weight. Now they are back with the pack. It is not where you want to be, but 29 teams end there every season. This is just a return to reality as it should be.

“Obviously they win a championship and have the destination on their back from the very day,” said Derrick White. “Records and depths are through in every season.

“And this part sucks.”

(Photo by Sam Hauser: Brad Penner / Imagn Images)