Celtics' latest NBA title reign a brief one after Knicks rout them in Game 6 of second round

NEW YORK (AP) — Even when Jayson Tatum was lost to a season-ending injury earlier this week, the Boston Celtics still believed they could find a way to win.

The belief ended with 1:49 remaining in the third quarter of Game 6 on Friday night, when coach Joe Mazzulla pulled his starters with the New York Knicks leading by 41 points.

The Knicks went on to a 119-81 victory to win the Eastern Conference semifinal series and ensure that the Celtics' latest title reign would be a brief one.

“I thought they gave it everything they had throughout this season,” Mazzulla said. “Obviously we didn’t achieve that, but you can’t take away from what they did and this is the price you pay for trying to go after something and that’s how it goes.”

The Celtics rolled to the NBA's best record last season, but this time settled for the No. 2 seed in the East behind Cleveland. Still, Boston won 61 games, including a franchise-record 33 on the road, and was favored to defeat a Knicks team it swept in the regular season.

But the Celtics blew 20-point leads at home in both of the first two games, lost Tatum late in Game 4 when they were trying to tie the series, and never had a chance Friday to send it back to Boston for a decisive game Monday.

“We didn’t have the same team this year that we had last year," guard Derrick White said. "Every year it’s a different team. We had a goal at the beginning of the year and we fell short.”

Perhaps things might have been different with a healthy Tatum, their leading scorer who figures to miss at least a good chunk of next season while recovering from surgery.

And perhaps a healthy Kristaps Porzingis would have helped. He finished an awful series with four points in 11 minutes off the bench in Game 6. Plagued by the apparent re-emergence of a virus he had late in the season that saps his energy, he lost his starting spot in the series and never scored in double figures while logging more than 20 minutes only once.

“It was a tough challenge for me personally," Porzingis said. "Ends on a bitter note like this, but we all have to go home and know that we left everything out here and then you can sleep at night.”

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