From Jaylen Brown to Luke Kornet, Celtics show world there's more basketball to be played

New York Times

15-05-2025

BOSTON — Let's be clear on this: These 2024-25 Boston Celtics are not scrappy underdogs. Being faced with a 3-1 second-round deficit as they punched in for work Wednesday night was entirely of their own doing, thanks to too many missed 3's, too little defensive cleverness and, worst of all, a general sluggishness that's unbecoming of defending NBA champions.
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And yet here they are, heading back to New York for Game 6 after their take-that 127-102 victory over the Knicks at TD Garden. And as the hoops world well knows, they did it without Jayson Tatum. Or maybe they did it because of Tatum, using their star player's season-ending ruptured Achilles tendon to provide an emotional boost to keep this season going.
'Honestly, losing JT is tough, especially for how much work he puts into the game, works on his body, everything he does to compete night after night,' said Derrick White, who stepped up with a 34-point performance. 'Seeing him go down is tough, but we have a lot of guys out here who are highly competitive.
'Lot of talent in that room,' White said. 'Seeing your brother go down was tough. He texted us today. He's cheering us on.'
Let's talk about some of those guys being cheered on by Tatum. There was, of course, Jaylen Brown and his 26 points and solid two-way play, but what really got the Garden rocking was the play of big man Luke Kornet. With Kristaps Porziņģis still battling illness — 'He couldn't breathe. He was available if absolutely necessary,' Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla explained after the game — Kornet took over in the second half. Sometimes, extra value is what you get when you use Kornet, and this was one of those times. It wasn't just the numbers — 10 points, nine rebounds, seven blocked shots — but the uproariousness he provided as he did his work. He rejected a Josh Hart shot all the way to Charlestown. He delivered a backwards dunk that by the time you read this will have been viewed by 70 percent of the world.
KORNET GOES REVERSE ON THE LOB ‼️
HE. IS. EVERYWHERE. https://t.co/IdPEgrXPRE pic.twitter.com/mPqgF5ekaT
— NBA (@NBA) May 15, 2025
The crowd loved it, and the crowd needed something to love. But there was a noticeable Knicks-fan presence in the Causeway Street arena, suggesting that some Celtics fans passed their tickets on to the secondary market.
This kind of New York fan stampede famously happened to the then-hapless New England Patriots on that last day of the 1990 season, when Giants fans gobbled up pretty much every ticket at Foxboro Stadium to cheer for the Super Bowl-bound Big Blue. This wasn't anything close to that. But from the moment Tatum fell to the ground Monday night inside that other Garden, there began a lot of buzz that the Celtics are about to undergo a major makeover. Everyone from Mazzulla and Brown to Lucky the Leprechaun and the Celtic Dancers are being talked about as on the way out, and that can be tough on players — whatever their stats, whatever their bankrolls.
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'I can only speak for myself, I'm not sure about the rest of the guys, but what I will say is I appreciate the fans that showed up tonight,' Brown said. 'It was a great atmosphere. It was loud. It's easy to kind of write things off. Obviously, it's unfortunate what happened to JT, but we still got basketball to be played.'
White, too, wrote off the talk about the Celtics being written off.
'I didn't hear nothin',' White said. 'There's always talk. Good talk. Bad talk. I try to just block it all out. I came in yesterday, watched film, and we kind of looked each other in the eye, and (were) ready to go. We got a lot of guys who won a lot of games at a high level. Obviously, there's no replacing JT and what he does for us, but we did it with the guys we got.'
It's too easy to say that the Celtics 'didn't quit.' We have something better: So in control were they in the second half that they began to play like the team that was out to close this series and move on to the Eastern Conference finals. That's what the Knicks were supposed to be doing. They did not.
Mazzulla, asked after the game if this is 'the most connected' the Celtics have been, said, 'It's tough to say, this team has been around a long time and done stuff together. We did what was necessary to get back to New York … everybody in that locker room has another layer they can get to, and they did as the game went on. They just have to continue to do that.'
Minor quibble with that quote from Mazzulla. While the coach has license to say 'this team has been around a long time and done stuff together,' they don't have much experience doing stuff without Tatum in the mix. We're not talking about rotations here. We're talking about Tatum being out for what remains of this season, and what Mazzulla and his players plan to do about it.
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Against the Knicks in Game 5, they did plenty.
And now?
'Four hours ago, we just had to win one game,' Mazzulla said. 'Now we have to win one game. That's just how you have to look at it.'
Another way to look at it is that a victory in New York on Friday night forces a decisive Game 7 at TD Garden. It's safe to say the secondary market wouldn't be kind to Knicks fans.
If the Celtics survive this series and move to an Eastern Conference finals rematch against the Indiana Pacers, that's when they can be viewed as scrappy underdogs, whatever the actual betting odds.
For now, the Celtics still have a mess of their own making to clean up.
(Photo of Luke Kornet blocking a shot by Karl-Anthony Towns: Brian Fluharty / Getty Images)