The Celtics suffered a crushing defeat in the second round, continuing the NBA s defeat in the defending title

The defending NBA champion has not yet come close to defending, and the Celtics continued this decline on Friday.

The Boston Celtics seemed to be at ease for most of the regular season and in the first round against the Orlando Magic, chasing their second three-game winning streak in the NBA championship, but in the second round, their form collapsed completely. Due to its own reasons and uncontrollable reasons, the Celtics lost 81-119 to the New York Knicks in Game 6 of Madison Square Garden and missed the playoffs.

With this loss, a new NBA championship will be officially produced in 2025. The last team to defend their titles was still the Golden State Warriors in 2017 and 2018, and the Warriors have also recently suffered elimination. Unless the Denver Nuggets win the championship, we will be the sixth different champion in the past six seasons in professional basketball history.

Incredibly, according to KNBR's Greg Silver, no defending champion has made a second round since the Warriors made their way to the NBA Finals in 2019 in pursuit of three consecutive championships.

The Los Angeles Lakers were eliminated in the first round after winning the championship in 2021, while the other five defending champions of the same period were eliminated in the Western Conference semi-finals. After losing, Celtics guard Derek White talked about why it was so difficult to win consecutive championships through ClutchPoints' Daniel Donabedian.

"We didn't have a straight championship, but it's hard to win in this league," White said. "You have to learn and grow." The Celtics are now facing a very interesting offseason. Their roster includes veterans like Ju Holiday and Al Horford, as well as Christapus Porzingis, who has been underperformed by serious illness almost throughout the playoffs.

Since Jason Tatum is likely to miss the entire 2025-26 season, the team must decide how to deal with next season and it will be very interesting to see how they deal with the offseason after a second round of defeat.