Boston Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla reflected on his team’s second-round playoff exit following a 119-81 blowout loss to the New York Knicks in Game 6 on Friday at Madison Square Garden.
The defending champions were eliminated despite a 64-win regular season, and Mazzulla acknowledged the abrupt end without showing much outward emotion.
“There wasn’t really much emotion there,” Mazzulla said postgame. “That’s just the way it goes… you move on as a team, and that’s it.”
The Celtics’ season unraveled quickly after Jayson Tatum suffered a season-ending Achilles injury in Game 4, leaving Boston shorthanded against a Knicks team firing on all cylinders.
Asked about the team’s recurring struggles to advance past the second round in recent years, Mazzulla cited a lingering psychological barrier.
“We’ll spend the summer looking through the differences,” he said. “That’s obviously a psychological hurdle… we just weren’t able to get through that.”
The Celtics had entered the playoffs as the East’s second seed and defeated the Orlando Magic 4-1 in the first round, but they failed to hold several early leads throughout the second-round series against New York.
When asked what changed, Mazzulla credited the Knicks for capitalizing on momentum swings.
“They made huge momentum plays… offensive rebounds, end-of-quarter plays—those are habits that impact games and series,” he said.
Boston’s final game of the season was its worst playoff loss since 2017, with the Knicks outscoring the Celtics by 27 at halftime and stretching the lead to as many as 41 in the third.
Despite the blowout, Mazzulla praised his players’ season-long mindset.
“They gave it everything they had… when you go after something, this is the price you pay,” he said.
Jaylen Brown led the Celtics with 20 points but committed seven turnovers. Derrick White shot just 3-of-11, and Jrue Holiday was held to four points on 1-of-8 shooting.
Mazzulla denied that fatigue played a factor in the team’s collapse.
“Fatigue? Obviously I saw that tonight a little bit, but I didn’t see that throughout the series,” he said.
He also had high praise for Knicks head coach Tom Thibodeau, who guided New York to its first Eastern Conference finals since 2000.
“You got to tip your hat off to the Knicks. They outplayed us… Tibs is a lifer, man. He deserves it,” Mazzulla said.
When asked if the loss felt heavier due to championship expectations, Mazzulla dismissed that idea.
“It has nothing to do with the weight of it… most coaches, the ratio of heartbreak to success, you probably have more of those,” he said.
