Chad Finn

4 days ago | bostonglobe.com | Chad Finn

A few thoughts on the state of national NBA broadcasts while waiting for Reggie Miller to tell us another dozen times that Jalen Brunson won the Clutch Player of the Year award …▪ The overall play in the NBA postseason has been consistently compelling. The same cannot be said for most of the broadcasts, in part because of a dearth of top-notch color commentators. Miller, who was paired as usual with the always superb Kevin Harlan for Games 1 and 2 of the Celtics-Knicks series, is perplexing.

5 days ago | bostonglobe.com | Chad Finn

The 18th banner, collected last summer, dangles from the Garden rafters as a lovely green-and-white reminder of what this team — which retained every significant player from a year ago — can achieve when at its best. The Celtics, homegrown stars Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown in particular, overcame past playoff agonies (plural), and seasons of growing pains to win that championship. It was a triumph of perseverance more than anything else.

1 week ago | bostonglobe.com | Chad Finn

A good number of Celtics observers, perhaps even a majority that would include me among them, presumed this second-round series with the Knicks would be a rather ungentlemanly Gentleman’s Sweep in the champs’ favor. Celtics in five, the thinking went, a logical if slightly arrogant evaluation of a rivalry based in geography rather than any significant shared history in the last 52 years — beyond an occasional playoff series or Bernard King clinic on scoring in the paint, anyway.

1 week ago | bostonglobe.com | Chad Finn

When Drew Carter and Brian Scalabrine signed off Tuesday with a salute to producer Paul Lucey, director Jim Edmonds, and the many behind-the-scenes folks on NBC Sports Boston’s Celtics broadcasts, they were signing off from something else too. The regional sports network’s broadcast of the Celtics’ series-clinching Game 5 victory over the Magic wasn’t just the last game Carter and Scalabrine will call this season, with all live games strictly national broadcasts from the second round and beyond.

1 week ago | boston.com | Chad Finn

A few thoughts on the Celtics while wondering how many times Paolo Banchero muttered, “Please put me back in now, Coach” and “How about now, Coach?” during the champs’ decisive third quarter Tuesday night …Allow me to make an overdue apology: It was a big mistake to prefer the Celtics play the Magic in the first round rather than the Hawks, which indeed is a nonsense take I believed during the play-in round.