Despite Game 7 struggles, Celtics and Bruins fans have great seasons to remember

It wasn’t supposed to end like this, not in Game 7, not in our house.

But for Boston sports fans, the knife got plunged into our hearts not once, but twice this week as both the Bruins and Celtics were ousted from the 2nd round of their respective playoffs in front of the hometown faithful. But while it’s easy to point fingers or make excuses as to why these clubs are now out of the postseason, let’s take a look here at what we are dealing with.

The Celtics are coming off a championship season in which they played 26 postseason games and then did a ton of media appearances celebrating that hard-fought 17th World title. Fast forward to this year where an injury-depleted Team Green fought through a grueling seven-game set with the Chicago Bulls and then another seven with the Orlando Magic.

Quick math: that’s 204 games in roughly two years time, not taking into account the preseason games, practices and the overall wear and tear of being an NBA player. It’s nice to think an offseason solves all woes but eventually keeping up the breakneck pace was going to become too much.

And c’mon now: even if they survived Sunday, they would have needed a Lebron James injury miracle to make it to the NBA Finals over Cleveland. You know it, I know it, we all know it.

Need one more stat to get yourself to sleep tonight? The last time an NBA Champion repeated? The 2000-01 and 2001-02 Los Angeles Lakers. The last team to make it to the Finals in consecutive years? The 2003-04 and 2004-05 Detroit Pistons. It’s tough to get there and even tougher to repeat.

With no Kevin Garnett, no Leon Powe and a gassed Paul Pierce, we should be happy with what we got: a gutsy, hustling club that came one big game short of the Eastern Conference Finals. Remember the excitement of those Bulls games and the night Eddie House ripped up the Garden but whatever you do, don’t look back at this season and think ‘failure’.

After all, they did just win a title about 12 months ago, went 62-20 and were the No.2 seed in the Eastern Conference this year.

For the Bruins, this season was really a gift. No one expected them to be this good and certainly no one expected them to be a No. 1 seed going into the NHL Playoffs. For a team that was so reviled and undervalued for years upon years, the ’08-’09 campaign was a real reacquainting with the Boston fans who responded by filling the TD Banknorth Garden night after night.

Better yet, this was an extremely likable Bruins team that had something for everyone. Goaltender Tim Thomas had a career year and broke out of the platoon role he shared with Manny Fernandez early on. Milan Lucic became a cult hero overnight and someone that Cam Neely-starved diehards latched onto.

Younger talents like Phil Kessel, Blake Wheeler and David Krejci became known entities in a city that already had plenty of talents to identify with. Veterans like the Marks (Stuart, Savard, Recchi) and Zdeno Chara played pivotal roles throughout the year. This group made people actually care about them which is pretty amazing considering the lack of interest in them prior to this run.

There is a lot to build on for the Bruins, but for those of us still trying to understand what we’re dealing with, next season is now even more important. There is no more flying under the radar and coming off such a successful year, there are the dreaded expectations that come with that. Fans will expect big things next year and rightfully so – we put our faith and eyes on this team for months. Now we want to know if our investment is going to pay off.

The fact that the man who sucker-punched Aaron Ward and shouldn’t have played in Game 7 scored the game-winning goal in overtime hurts. However, the fact the Bruins got down 3-1 in the series and fought back to a Game 7 is a reassuring feeling and while they got close, it just wasn’t good enough…this year.

In all reality, we’ve been pretty spoiled in this city and damn, it’s felt good the entire time. Three of the four major sports here have crowned champions since 2001, two of them multiple times. Our teams win consistently and cause us to expect more out of them as a result. There is lots of money in being on the winning side of the ledger and the Beantown Four get it.

Yep, it’s been a bad few days but cheer up. The Red Sox are still here and about to open up a big series this week against division-leading Toronto and the Patriots are still the Patriots. While the sting of losing hurts, I’d rather feel the pain than never experience the pleasure…and there’s been a lot of pleasure in Boston to go around this decade.

Now about that David Ortiz guy…

Josh Nason is the publisher and main writer for New England-based sports and media blog Small White Ball. He can be reached at josh [at] smallwhiteball [dot-com].