Boston Celtics former player Paul Pierce. Peter Casey-Imagn Images

Celtics legend bitter after Boston gets eliminated by Knicks in Game 6 blowout

Originally posted on Larry Brown Sports
By Darryn Albert | Last updated May 17, 2025 9:08 AM ET

Paul Pierce is upset now that his beloved Boston Celtics are officially going home.

The Celtics suffered a season-ending loss in Friday’s Game 6 of their second-round playoff series against the New York Knicks. They got bullied from the opening tip at Madison Square Garden in New York. (going down by double digits early in the second quarter) and went on to trail by as many as 41 points before eventually losing 119-81. As a result, the Knicks won the series 4-2, ending Boston’s hopes of winning a second straight NBA title.

After the final buzzer, the retired Celtics great Pierce went live on Instagram and let it all out. During Pierce’s venting session, he made some salty comments about Boston’s elimination.

“We was injured, didn’t have our star,” said Pierce, in reference to Jayson Tatum. “But it’s cool, we’re gonna bounce back next year.

“Pacers gonna pop y’all though,” Pierce added of the Knicks. “Y’all know that right? Y’all know that the Pacers is gonna get y’all. So I don’t even wanna hear all that. Yeah, y’all feeling good. Y’all beat an injured Celtics team … We didn’t have our All-NBA player, First Team, MVP candidate, led us in all of these categories. So you know, whatever.”

You can see the full clip below (where Pierce also gave props to the Knicks team and to their head coach, Tom Thibodeau, Pierce’s former championship-winning assistant coach on the Celtics).

Paul Pierce goes live after the Knicks defeat the Celtics in 6 games pic.twitter.com/KPjcDifTTO
— 2Cool2Blog (@2Cool2Blog) May 17, 2025

Pierce clearly feels that Tatum's absence, who went down in the middle of the series with a torn Achilles, made all the difference for Boston. But what he didn’t mention was that the Celtics lost the first two games of the series at home in Boston with Tatum fully healthy and were en route to losing Game 4 in New York, too, before Tatum was injured late in the fourth quarter.

Additionally, Pierce said nothing about the injury luck that went in the Celtics’ favor when they won the NBA title last season. During that championship run, Boston faced the Miami Heat in the first round without Jimmy Butler for the whole series, and later got the Indiana Pacers in the Eastern Conference Finals with Tyrese Haliburton missing the second half of the series.

Pierce is also probably extra annoyed by Boston’s elimination this year since a guarantee he made before Game 2 against the Knicks completely backfired on him. While Pierce did, to his credit, keep his word in a big way after failing that guarantee, he is all but crashing out now that the Celtics have formally been bounced from the playoffs.

This article first appeared on Larry Brown Sports and was syndicated with permission.

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