With Boston Celtics president
Danny’s Ainge stepping down and an elevation of coach Brad Stevens to the front
office, a disappointing season for the Boston Celtics came to an end on Wednesday
in the hands of the Brooklyn Nets, who ended Eastern conference final chances for
the Celtics with a 123-109 victory.

Already down 3-1 in the seven-match
series, game 5 saw Brooklyn Nets putting the Celtics out of their misery in
what completes a rather horrible season for the Boston side, who lost 40 times
in a total of 77 games (including both regular season and post-season).

Admittedly, the Celtics have had an injury-prone and COVID-exhausted season when it comes to 2020-2021, with even their main scorer Jayson Tatum out at one point in April, suffering from the infectious disease.

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Kemba Walker and Robert Williams III, on the other hand, have been injury-prone for almost the entire season. The Boston-team has also had to bid farewell for this season to Jaylen Brown, who was knocked out of the season earlier due to a wrist surgery to repair his torn ligament.

The bench will expectedly be facing a huge question-mark in the upcoming off-season. Romeo Langford and Aaron Nesmith played off the bench in the final month and have caught considerable attention.

Langford, performing well in the defense, can potentially turn into a future option for the Celtics, who, at this point, need it desperately for the sheer lack of intensity in attack, if not anything else.

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The match on Wednesday, for most
parts, saw domination from the Nets, but also enough chances for Celtics to
come back. Quarters two and three both ended with scores of 28-27, once in
favour of Celtics and once siding with Nets.

While the trio of James Harden,
Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant scored 34, 25 and 24 points respectively for the
Nets, leading to the major chunk of their total score, Jayson Tatum and Evan
Fournier (32 and 18 points respectively) tried to drag their team to a
respectable position, but in vain.

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Interestingly, no reflection
from past game results was spotted during the match or the series, as Celtics
ended their season with a defensive rating of 11.8.

Kyrie Irving, one of Brooklyn
Nets’ star this season, acknowledged on Wednesday that something
was going wrong in their exhausted opponents, saying “There was a lot going on
personally while I was there in Boston”, adding however that there was “nothing
but respect” for players and coaches from fans, as per a CBS report.

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Contrastingly, Celtics Shooting
Guard Marcus Smart said “I don’t think it’s nothing to stress about. I think
we’re all right”, perhaps highlighting the core of the problem in the team which
went to the conference finals three times in the last four years.