The Celtics had their streak of four consecutive blowout wins in the playoffs snapped Thursday with a 118-94 loss to the Cavaliers at TD Garden in Game 2 of the Eastern Conference semifinals.
The humbling defeat evened the series, which has begun to follow a familiar script for the top-seeded Celtics who routed the Heat in their first-round opener around a decisive Game 2 loss.
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The Cavs weren’t historically productive from 3-point range like Miami was in its win, but they did make 46.4% of theirs to Boston’s 22.9%.
“In both of the games we lost here at home, we shot the ball incredibly bad,” Celtics forward Jaylen Brown said. “They shot the ball really well, and we didn’t play defense to our level tonight.”
Brown called the Celtics’ defensive performance “unacceptable.” Cleveland hadn’t scored more than 106 points in any of its first eight playoff games and managed just 95 in Game 1.
Spearheading Thursday’s effort was All-Star guard Donovan Mitchell, who scored 23 of his 29 points in the second half to go along with eight assists and seven rebounds. The Cavs also got a big night from Evan Mobley, who had 21 points, 10 rebounds, five assists and two blocks despite spending much of the second half in foul trouble. Six Cavaliers players scored in double figures, including Caris LeVert’s 21 points off the bench.
Jayson Tatum paced the Celtics with 25 points, seven boards and six assists.
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Game 1 standouts Jaylen Brown (19 points) and Derrick White (10) struggled mightily from deep, going a combined 1-for-14 on 3s.
Celtics’ Joe Mazzulla to departing assistant: Prepare to be hated as head coach
The Cavs also out-rebounded the Celtics 44-31 and outscored them by 16 points in the paint despite missing injured starting center Jarrett Allen (bruised ribs). Boston also was down a key big man in Kristaps Porzingis (calf strain), and for the first time since his injury, it missed him.
“They did a good job, especially on pick-and-roll,” Celtics head coach Joe Mazulla said. “They tested our pick-and-roll defense. We have to do better at that. But a lot of that stuff in the paint came in transition because of our poor offensive spacing and our rim decisions at times.”
The Celtics, who won their first two games without Porzingis by 34 and 25 points, opened this one with a 14-5 run that prompted an early timeout by Cavs coach J.B. Bickerstaff. Four Boston players scored points during that opening flurry, with Al Horford and White both sinking 3s.
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Cleveland quickly rallied, however, to tie the game at 19-19, then took its first lead of the game when was called for a foul while blocking a LeVert dunk.
The partisan Garden crowd didn’t like the call, but LeVert hit both free throws as part of a 9-0 Cavs run. Cleveland led 30-24 at the end of the first — the first time Boston had been outscored in any quarter since Game 4 against Miami.
Boston Celtics forward Jayson Tatum (0) goes past Cleveland Cavaliers forward Evan Mobley (4) at the Celtics take on the Cavaliers in game 2 of the second round of NBA playoffs at the Garden on May 9. (Staff Photo By Stuart Cahill/Boston Herald)
The Celtics then responded with an immediate 9-0 run of their own, exploiting a small-ball Cavs lineup to score at the rim on three consecutive possessions.
After being outscored 22-6 in the paint in the opening 12 minutes, five of Boston’s first eight makes of the second quarter were layups or dunks — two by Jrue Holiday and three by Payton Pritchard.
The Celtics also got two second-quarter 3s from Horford and one from Tatum, then went cold, making just one field goal over the final 4:53 of the first half. Boston entered halftime tied 54-54 after a sloppy Brown turnover and foul gifted Cleveland foul shots in the final seconds.
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The Cavaliers then controlled the pace of play during a lopsided third quarter, led by their talented backcourt duo of Mitchell and Darius Garland.
Mitchell shook off his sleepy, six-point opening half to score 16 in the third, including a buzzer-beating 3-pointer. Garland added nine points in the frame as Cleveland’s lead swelled to double digits.
“He made some tough shots tonight,” Brown said. “Some tough contested threes. We’ve got to be up. He’s a basketball player, and we’ve got to have a little more alertness to him. Tonight, he got the best of us.”
Mobley picked up his fourth foul with five minutes remaining in the third, forcing him to the bench. But the Celtics couldn’t capitalize against his replacement, past-his-prime veteran Tristan Thompson. Cleveland took a 90-78 lead into the fourth quarter and never looked back.
Mazzulla emptied his bench with five minutes remaining, giving rookie guard Jordan Walsh the first postseason action of his young career.
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The Celtics rebounded from their ugly Game 2 loss to the Heat by reeling off three straight routs to win that series in five. Mazzulla will be hoping Thursday’s clunker spurs a similar turnaround.
“You treat it the same way you would a win,” the coach said. “You come in tomorrow, you watch film, and you get better for Game 3.”
BOSTON (WHDH) – A 20-year-old man is dead, and an 81-year-old man will face criminal charges following a wrong-way crash on Interstate 93 in Boston late Saturday night, officials said.
Troopers responding to a reported multi-vehicle crash on Route 93 northbound before Exit 15A around 11:45 p.m. determined a driver in a 2004 Cadillac Escalade got on the highway in the wrong direction and nearly struck two vehicles — a Honda Odyssey and an Audi A4 — causing both to swerve and crash into each other, according to state police.
The occupants of the Honda Odyssey, a family of four, were transported to a Boston-area hospital for evaluation.
Shortly after the initial crash, the wrong-way driver, later identified as Antone Carvalho, of Somerset, collided head-on with a Chevrolet Cruze.
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The driver of the Chevrolet Cruze, a man in his 20s from Haverhill, died from his injuries. His name has not been released.
Carvalho will be issued a summons to appear in court at a later date.
This is a developing news story; stay with 7NEWS on-air and online for the latest details.
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BOSTON (WHDH) – It’s the fall of 1974 in South Boston, and four generations of the Moran family are rushing to church for baby Lila’s baptism. The moment is filled with great anticipation, and one of the most memorable images frozen in time in Constantine Manos’s “Where’s Boston” series.
Now, more than 50 years later, that photograph has taken on a new meaning.
The Boston Athenaeum has revived the landmark exhibition first shown during Boston’s Bicentennial celebration in 1976. To mark America’s 250th anniversary, the library has paired Manos’s photographs with 12 newly recorded oral histories, giving the people captured in the images a chance to tell the stories behind them.
“These images show one moment in time, but when you talk to someone and ask them to reflect on it, you learn so much more about them and their larger family history,” said Boston Athenaeum curator Lauren Graves. “Then somehow that history, too, ends up relating to a larger Boston history.”
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In their oral history, George and Carolyn Moran reflected on the social upheaval surrounding Boston’s bussing crisis, when court-ordered school integration sparked intense racial conflict across the city.
While the baptism photograph captures a day of celebration, the Moran family said it also stirs memories of another pivotal moment: their decision to leave the South Boston neighborhood they had long called home.
“Around the corner came a huge swarm of people being chased by police on horseback with clubs,” George Moran said. “Apparently earlier that day there had been a stabbing around the corner of South Boston High School, and the town was in total turmoil over that incident.”
Fearing for their children’s safety as tensions escalated, the two Boston Public Schools teachers made the difficult decision to move their family to Brookline.
“We were very careful in making our decision because we did have a strong allegiance to the schools and to education,” Carolyn Moran said. “I would say our concerns about the education of our daughters was our primary reason for making the move.”
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Courtesy Boston Athenaeum
Many of Manos’s seemingly innocuous photographs reveal the city’s deeply segregated spaces that shaped Boston a half-century ago. An Italian religious process in the North End, young Black men unwinding at Franklin park, and a father looking lovingly at his son at a Chassidic center in Brookline each offer a glimpse into communities that rarely intersected.
But even amid turmoil and division, Manos found beauty in life’s small moments—a bride leaving a church on her wedding day, a young man absorbed in a game of chess, and a father flying a kite with his son.
Courtesy Boston Athenaeum
“The exhibit shows some of the terrible times of protest, but it also shows the moments of joy,” Carolyn Moran said. “They’re all juxtaposed, and that’s life—these difficult times as well as beautiful times.”
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As the nation celebrates its 250th anniversary, curators hope the exhibition encourages visitors to reflect on not just how far the city has come, but also the work that still needs to be done in the coming decades.
“We thought this was a unique moment to look back at the Bicentennial, to look back 50 years and think about this recent past,” Graves said. “What do we want for Boston today? What do we want for the future? And what do we want for the future of the country itself?”
Visitors are also invited to become part of the exhibition by filling out comment cards reflecting on where Boston is today.
The Boston Athenaeum says it is still identifying people featured in Manos’s photographs and plans to continue expanding the exhibition’s online oral history collection.
“Where’s Boston” is open until December 12.
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The 24-year-old forward had a career-high 68 points (27 goals, 41 assists) in 2024-25 with the Sabres before getting traded to Utah in June, 2025. Peterka posted 47 points (25 goals, 22 assists) through 82 games in his first year with the Mammoth.
“He’s got an elite shot. Probably gives us another look on the elbows in a power play situation. His power play minutes dipped a little bit last year; his 5-on-5 production has been really good, plays both wings, can probably play with a couple different types of centers,” Sweeney said.
Peterka had a similar assessment for himself.
“I think a pretty fast game, likes to score goals,” he said. “Just overall, exciting player that loves to make plays.”
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Sweeney also sees a versatility in Peterka’s game that can benefit his new teammates up and down the lineup.
“I think he fits into a good group age-wise because he’s able to have played in the league with all the experience he’s had, the success he’s had, so he can ride shotgun with David because he has had scoring,” Sweeney said. “He can go down and drive a line, which he has done.”
The prospect of him playing with someone like David Pastrnak is something that excites both Sweeney and Peterka.
“That would be pretty sick, not going to lie,” Peterka said. “If you have that caliber of a player, I think everyone wants to play with him. From the past, playing against him, even watching him, was always super special. I would be super honored, for sure.”
While Peterka has already played four full seasons in the NHL, he still has his whole career in front of him. He joins a young new wave of Bruins players – alongside the likes of Reichel, Fraser Minten, Marat Khusnutdinov and James Hagens – who will carve the future identity of the team. The ceiling is high for Peterka.
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“In JJ’s case, he has had success. We have to come in and put him in the right situations so he continues to score at the level we think he can. Morgan [Geekie] is a great example,” Sweeney said. “Did we think he was going to score 39 goals when we first acquired him? No. But that’s always the hope – that a player will take advantage of a new opportunity and playing with different types of players than what they were in their other environment.”
Peterka is ready for the challenge and to prove that he has another gear to his game to help the Bruins win.
“I think it’s always nice to have a fresh start. I think especially after the year I had last year where I wasn’t really happy with the performance I put on the ice,” Peterka said. “For me, I feel like it’s a fresh start. And for a team like Boston, it couldn’t be any better.”
