Celtics enter offseason with frontcourt questions after stunning 76ers collapse

Boston spent most of the season looking like a machine built for June, not April. Instead, the Celtics are heading into the offseason with their first-ever blown 3-1 lead, a 109-100 Game 7 loss to Philadelphia that turned a year of championship expectations into a round of hard questions about the roster, the bench and the direction of the franchise.

Jayson Tatum’s comeback had been the emotional center of Boston’s run. After returning from a torn right Achilles and playing at a high level, he was ruled out for Game 7 with left knee stiffness. Joe Mazzulla said Tatum had knee discomfort and that the medical staff and coach decided he would not play. Tatum said his recovery and comeback had gone so well that the ending was especially painful, and he expressed hope that his rehab and level of play could help other players returning from similar injuries.

That loss now lands directly on Brad Stevens’ roster-building choices. At the trade deadline, Stevens was trying to get under the tax, avoid repeater penalties and still improve the team. The move that followed, a deal for Nikola Vucevic, never translated the way Boston needed. Vucevic was benched in Game 7 in favor of Luka Garza, a telling sign of how thin the frontcourt had become when the series tightened. Brian Robb of MassLive has pointed to Boston’s lack of a reliable backup big man as a rare miss for Stevens, and it showed up in the moment that mattered most.

Mazzulla’s Game 7 lineup only sharpened the scrutiny. Without Tatum, he started Derrick White, Baylor Scheierman, Jaylen Brown, Ron Harper Jr. and Luka Garza, a five-man group that had never played together in the regular season. Philadelphia still had the best player on the floor in Joel Embiid and the pace-setter in Tyrese Maxey, who helped push the 76ers to the series-clinching win. Boston had chances to extend the season, but the Celtics could not hold off a Philadelphia team that became just the 14th in NBA history to come back from a 3-1 deficit in a best-of-7 series.

Now the franchise has to decide whether this is a matter of refinement or a philosophical reset. Boston still has a $27.7 million trade exception from the Anfernee Simons deal that expires at next year’s trade deadline, along with smaller exceptions, the $15 million non-taxpayer mid-level exception and the $5.4 million bi-annual exception. Neemias Queta’s $2.7 million team option, and the possibility of extending him for up to four years and $92 million, adds another frontcourt decision to a summer already crowded with them. The Celtics held the No. 1 seed in the East for all but six days of the regular season; the pressure now is whether that level of control can be turned into something more durable than another painful reset.