The Miami Heat might be the only group of people that foresaw how the Boston Celtics would fold in the Eastern Conference finals. Sunday night’s Game 3 felt like a climactic point, with the Celtics getting their doors blown off by the Heat on the road, leading to hilarious exchanges between Charles Barkley and Gabe Vincent.
If the Celtics were a championship team — their effort, with their season unofficially on the line — certainly didn’t resemble one.
That same effort seemed pretty jarring to NBA legend Earvin “Magic” Johnson, who had quite the reactive tweet to the Celtics’ no-show in South Beach. Johnson is known for tweeting thoughts that are, for the most part, pretty obvious. Normally, he’s clearly not going to be someone who ruffles feathers or says anything particularly “spicy.”
On this occasion, Johnson went absolutely in on the Celtics and their embarrassing play in Game 3.
In my 44 years of being associated with the NBA I never thought I’d see a Boston Celtics team, a franchise with 17 Championships, quit. I know Celtics fans all over the world must be disgusted and devastated. The Miami Heat blew them out 128-102 in Game 3.
— Earvin Magic Johnson (@MagicJohnson) May 22, 2023
Oh… my goodness? That might be the nicest possible way of candidly saying, “This team stinks,” that I’ve ever seen. And that it came from the typically polite Johnson is all the more jarring.
Lest I forget, we can’t discount the Los Angeles Lakers’ angle here. I’m sure it makes L.A. icons like Johnson feel better about the Lakers’ latest title shot likely going down the drain when they see the historical franchise rival Celtics also falling way short. It’s also probably a sign of respect, given all the hard-fought battles Johnson’s Lakers had with the 1980s Celtics.
There’s honesty, and there’s joyful pettiness. This Johnson tweet about the Celtics might have had both.