Boston Celtics stock up, stock down

The Boston Celtics are fresh off a disheartening end to the 2022-23 season, and the immediate "what's next" has now become underlined multiple times in permanent marker. Although the Celtics finished the regular season with a 57-25 record, their best mark since the 2008-09 season, falling into an 0-3 hole against the Miami Heat in the Eastern Conference Finals left the team's outlook a bit more cloudy.

Boston nearly overcoming that 3-0 deficit and making history helps the outlook of numerous players and coaches to an extent, but it doesn't fix everything.

Stock up

Jayson Tatum

Say what you will about Tatum, but his ability to take over games on the offensive end can't be understated. Tatum averaged career-best numbers during the regular season, racking up 30.1 points, 8.8 rebounds and 4.6 assists per game. He was great for the bulk of the postseason with averages of 27.2 points, 10.5 rebounds and 5.3 assists per game, but one specific moment pushed his stock even higher.

The Game 7 Eastern Conference Finals loss to the Miami Heat.

From a box score perspective, this makes no sense. Tatum was quiet offensively with 14 points on 5-of-13 shooting, and the Celtics lost at home 103-84 after winning three straight to force a Game 7 against the Heat.

Watching Tatum injure his lower leg/ankle roughly 50 seconds into Game 7 and seeing how brutally it impacted the Celtics on the offensive end was more than a bit eye-opening. Boston struggled to get anything going without Tatum being the same level of threat he had been all postseason, and it showed just how much the 25-year-old really means to this Celtics team.

Joe Mazzulla

This one is tough for Celtics fans to swallow, and if you're talking about Mazzulla's value in the regular season vs. postseason, there's no question it was higher before the playoffs began. But when you're the head coach of a team down 0-3 with a chance to go to the NBA Finals, in that moment, your stock is pretty low unless it's a coach who's already a future Hall of Famer.

Mazzulla's stock wasn't going up much with one win against the Heat after the first three losses, but the fact he managed to keep this team together and focused enough to reel off three straight, two of which were on the road, is impressive. The jury appears to still be out on Mazzulla's long-term outlook, but he (mostly) calmed down the chatter from fans and analysts who were calling for his job after the first three losses to the Heat.

Stock down

Jaylen Brown

Following the aforementioned injury to Tatum in Game 7 against the Heat, Brown was staring at a moment in which he could essentially slam the door on looming questions of whether the Celtics should give him a massive contract extension this offseason. Brown was in a position to take over offensively for a Boston team who desperately needed someone to step up and fill the void left while Tatum pushed through his injury and obviously wasn't 100 percent.

Instead, Brown struggled mightily from start to finish in the win-or-go-home Game 7, shooting just 34.8 percent from the field (8-of-23) and 1-of-9 from three-point range. The shooting struggles could be dismissed as an off night, but it was his eight turnovers that really hurt the Celtics, leaving them unable to get any kind of flow going that might set the team up for a comeback.

While the Celtics will likely still opt to pay Brown, he's going to enter next season with major question marks still lingering after how the season ended.

Al Horford

It almost feels wrong to even put Horford as a "stock down" player, considering the fact he's 37 years old and has done so many pivotal things for the Celtics over the years. There's no denying his impact on this franchise and even on this specific team, but it was a tough postseason for the veteran big man.

Horford posted career-postseason lows in points (6.7) and field-goal percentage (38.6) while averaging his lowest rebounding total at 7.2 per game since the 2016-17 season. His struggles from three-point range were also a major hit for the Celtics, as he shot just 29.8 percent, down from 48 percent last postseason.

The NBA Finals weren't kind to Horford, who struggled against the Heat to the tune of 6.7 points and 6.3 rebounds per game. He certainly had glimpses of brilliance but was unable to make much of an impact throughout a good portion of this postseason.