3 Boston Celtics who definitely won’t be back next season

Celtics who won’t be back next season: 1. Joe Mazzulla

This one is hard because, for much of this season, Mazzulla seemed to be a big success. Young and relatively inexperienced, he stepped into an incredibly difficult situation — interim coach, replacing Ime Udoka, a popular, locker-room-uniter who had led this team to the NBA Finals last season before earning a season-long suspension for an inappropriate sexual relationship with a subordinate.

Mazzulla helped elevate the Celtics’ offense, leading them to the No. 2 seed in the East, a better record than last season and earning himself the permanent job and a multi-year contract along the way. But the way the Celtics collapsed against the Heat — looking listless, uninspired and with no meaningful tactical adjustments through the first three games of the series put him right on the hot seat. After Game 3, reports leaked that his job could be on the line and ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski shared additional details about a rift that never healed.

The Celtics battled back and nearly pulled off a historic feat, becoming the first team in NBA postseason history to come back from a 3-0 deficit.

But they didn’t.

And, honestly, the way that it ended may only underscore how problematic it was that they were in this hole in the first place. They needed a miraculous Derrick White putback to win Game 6. And they found themselves in a double-digit hole before the end of the first half of Game 7 at home. Mazzulla didn’t really solve the Heat or make any tactical maneuvers that saved the series. The Celtics simply won when they made shots and lost when they didn’t. That’s well and good if you’re an underdog or in a series where you are evenly matched. But on paper, the Celtics had every advantage and should never have been in a position against the Heat where shooting variance alone was enough to send them home.

Rightly or wrongly, that’s going to come back on Mazzulla and could bring his Celtics’ tenure to a premature end.

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