Game 7 ended the Celtics’ season before any of us were ready to let go

BOSTON — Minutes after Jayson Tatum was ruled out of Game 7, Joe Mazzulla walked into the media room wearing a black “Celtics Mindset” hoodie. He didn’t raise his voice or change his tone. “This season was about creating different identities,” he said. “We’ve done this before.”

It landed the way most of his comments do. Calm. Controlled. Almost separate from the moment.

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Out on the floor, it didn’t feel that way.

By the time warmups started, there was a tension in the building that didn’t need volume to be obvious. You could see it in how people stood. Conversations shorter than usual. A few deep exhales mixed into the usual pregame buzz. When I was interviewing fans before Game 5, there were plenty of smiles and laughs. Not so much tonight. A Game 7 without one of your best players will do that to a fanbase.

Still, the players didn’t show it. Derrick White jogged out early, smiling, acknowledging the crowd. Payton Pritchard followed, more locked in than jovial, but that’s just PP. Sam Hauser stood along the sideline talking quietly with his family before heading back to the locker room, his dad giving him a firm pat on the back before saying goodbye.

For the Celtics, this was either going to be one more night of many more to come or the last one for a while.

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I got to my press seat a few minutes before tip, right around the time the starting lineup was announced.

Ron Harper Jr.
Luka Garza.
Baylor Scheierman.
Derrick White.
Jaylen Brown.

Joe heard the calls for adjustments and went full Michael Keaton. “You wanna get nuts? Fine. Let’s get nuts.”

Sitting next to me was a reporter from Istanbul, there for Adem Bona, who moved to Turkey at age 13 to play professionally with Istanbul Basket. His name? Bozkurt. His third language? English. But I’d soon learn that he knew enough English, and enough about basketball, to spend the next two and a half hours becoming my temporary Game 7 nemesis.

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We shook hands. The game started. I had no idea the stranger sitting next to me was going to help me cope with the end of the Celtics’ season.

The terrible, horrible, no…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/game-7-ended-celtics-season-083600678.html

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Publish date : 2026-05-03 08:36:00

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