Turn on an NBA podcast or talk show – it can be ESPN’s The Hoop Collective or The Lowe Post, First Take or NBA Today, or virtually any platform that produces NBA content – and see how long it takes before someone mentions how bad the Celtics are in the clutch. Chances are, it’ll be within the first three minutes of the team’s name being mentioned. The Boston Celtics and “choking” have simply become synonymous over the past couple seasons.
In both of the prior two years, the Celtics have had negative net ratings in playoff clutch time (-11.