The Boston Celtics had all the momentum heading into Game 7 after storming back from a 3-0 deficit, but things went horribly wrong for them on Monday night.
They suffered an embarrassing 103-84 blowout loss as the Miami Heat put in a dominant performance to advance to the NBA Finals. After the game, Charles Barkley blasted the Celtics for playing bad basketball and being a team that relies only on talent.
“No. 1, they played bad basketball,” Barkley said on Inside the NBA when asked about what went wrong for the Celtics. “They’re so undisciplined and unfundamentally sound. They win games strictly on talent. They don’t even run an offense and that’s what disappointed me the most.”
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Once Jayson Tatum tweaked his ankle and was a shell of himself in the game, the Celtics couldn’t just overwhelm the Heat with their talent. As Barkley said, it didn’t look like they were running any kind of proper offense either, as it was just shooting a lot of threes. They went a terrible 9-42 from beyond the arc in Game 7 and at some point, you have got to find other ways to score, but they never did.
A Pivotal Offseason Awaits For The Celtics
The Celtics have had a lot of deep playoff runs in recent years, but that championship continues to elude them. This exit at the hands of the Heat will raise more questions on whether this core of players has what it takes to win the title and we’ll soon find out whether the top brass believes in them.
Jaylen Brown is eligible for the supermax extension this summer and he’d want all of that money, but will the Celtics be willing to give it to him? Brown just struggles with consistency and when the team needed him the most in Game 7 with Tatum being hampered, he laid an egg with 19 points on 8-23 shooting to go with 8 turnovers. Tatum made it clear after Game 7 that he’d want Brown signed up but the Celtics may have some doubts now.
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