I’d encourage everyone to listen to JJs recent podcast with Ryan Russillo as they talk about this very subject. Russillo was a Boston sports talk radio guy for a while and got into the psyche of Celtics fans a bit. Definitely worth a listen but a few of his points were:
- Boston fans in general are a bit doom and gloom and always take the negative angle
- Statistically this Celtics teams had a season that compared to dominant champions of the past (16 Warriors, late 90s Bulls) but Celtics fans dismiss it with things like “they aren’t clutch” or “the don’t have anyone like Bird”
- they have been “ahead of schedule” getting to the eastern conference finals very early in the careers of Brown and Tatum (made it to the eastern conference finals in Browns first year in 2017, again in Tatums first year in 2018, and again in 2020, 2022, 2023), but because they have played in the ECF so often the narrative has become “they can’t win the big ones” instead of them over achieving just to get there
- For Tatum, people focus on what his isn’t vs what he is. He’s never going to be the best player in the league with Luka, Joker, Giannis, Steph, etc, but he is a regular all NBA guy in the 5-10 range. But fans expect him to be the best player so he will always come up short of those expectations. And he’s not super outgoing, more of a “I’ll let my game speak for itself” type, so he doesn’t hype himself to counter the negativity.
Anyway, I thought the conversation was interesting, especially given the recent discussion on this thread.
Looking forward to a great finals. Hope KP is healthy so we can see both teams compete at full strength. Will be curious to see the receptions KP gets in Dallas and Kyrie gets in Boston with their respective histories.