It’s been less than a week since the New York Knicks bested the defending champions, the Boston Celtics, to advance to the Eastern Conference Finals, and some still can’t believe it. While it wasn’t exactly a shocking upset, most experts had predicted a Celtics win. LeBron James, on the Mind The Game podcast with Steve Nash, claimed that Boston simply got bored with all their success. Shannon Sharpe caught wind of what The King said—and he strongly disagrees.
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“It seems like they get bored sometimes with the—I don’t want to say the process, because they are who they are,” James was quoted as saying.
LeBron definitely knows a thing or two about being a defending champion. But the Celtics did not look a ‘bored’ outfit throughout this season. It was just that their weaknesses were exposed brutally against the Knicks and by the time they could figure a way out to bounce back, it was all over for them.
“When you look at Tatum and [Jaylen] Brown, this is years and years and years and years, they punched their 10,000 hours, you know? But sometimes it seems like they get a little bored because of how great they are. Not only those two as individuals but them as a team, sometimes it looks like they get bored,” LeBron added.
And it wasn’t as if the Celtics kickstarted a dynasty that they got ‘bored of their success’. That’s what Sharpe reiterated on the latest edition of his Nightcap program.
“How you get bored? They won one championship,” screamed the NFL legend. “I could see if they won like three. Went back to back like Shaq and Kobe Lakers or the Bulls in the 90s.”
And Sharpe is right. Why would any team even be bored with the routine of making it to the biggest stage?
This led the panel, which also featured co-host Chad Ochocinco, to break down what went wrong in Boston’s loss to New York. “I think they got their a** whipped,” joked Sharpe. Guest NBA great Nick Van Exel pointed out that the Celtics relied solely on the three-ball.
“They live and they die by the 3. That’s how they gonna play,” agreed Ocho.
“Died,” responded Van Exel, drawing laughter from the group. Sharpe chimed in, adding that the Celtics were never able to properly set up their offense.
“Once those 3s don’t start falling it’s hard for them to get into a set in the last 5 minutes of the game because they really haven’t run a whole lot of sets to begin with,” he said.
It was more than just bad luck for the Celtics. The Knicks also crafted a strategy focused on keeping the game close, allowing their superstar Jalen Brunson to close out each contest. Sharpe said he recognized that approach early on.
Speaking from the Knicks’ perspective the three-time Super Bowl champion stated, “‘We believe with Brunson, who we believe is the best clutch player in the NBA, we believe if we can get you to the last 5 minutes of the game, we can beat ya.'”
Hindsight being what it is, the Knicks never gave up—even when the Celtics led by 20+ points in the first two games in Boston. So, while their strategy of keeping it close didn’t always work, they pulled off two magical comeback runs before letting Brunson take over. The plan proved sound in their Game 4 victory and was followed by a dominant blowout of the defending champs in Game 6.
Regardless of what Sharpe thinks, New York’s victory is quite a spectacular one, given Boston’s firepower. The Knicks were holding their own even before Jayson Tatum went down with a torn Achilles in Game 4. Now the real question is… can they do it again against Indiana?
