Joe Mazzulla started Luka Garza, Ron Harper Jr. and Baylor Scheierman in a season-ending Game 7, and Celtics fans do not have to pretend that is normal.
But the cheap argument is already getting too clean. One side wants to make the lineup card proof Mazzulla lost the room. The other wants to wave away every choice because Jayson Tatum was out. Neither answer is useful enough for an offseason that has to judge the coach, the bench and the roster's injury cover.
Start with the hard fact: Garza, Harper and Scheierman had started a combined 29 games during the season. That is not a normal Game 7 foundation. Tatum being ruled out with a calf injury did more than remove Boston's best scorer. It removed the big wing who can take a late-clock catch, punish a switch, calm a broken possession and keep everyone else in smaller jobs.
Then Sam Hauser stopped looking like the clean release valve. When a shooter is under 35 percent from three from Games 2 through 6, the defense does not have to lean as hard toward him. Those catches get less scary. The next pass gets later. The floor gets tighter for everyone who is suddenly being asked to do more.
That is the real defense of Mazzulla: he was not choosing between five playoff-tested answers. He was choosing which problem to put on the floor first.
The case against him is just as real. Injuries shrink the menu; they do not pick the order. Benching starting center Neemias Queta for Garza was an active call. Using Harper and Scheierman on the wings in place of Tatum and Hauser did not isolate uncertainty. It stacked it. If the goal was more offense, more shooting or a cleaner first action, the tradeoff had to show up quickly enough to survive Game 7 pressure. Celtics fans saw enough to question whether it did.
So the cleanest blame line is this: Mazzulla owns the first lineup, but Boston owns the conditions that made that lineup possible. A contender cannot arrive at a season-ending game needing three low-start-volume players to become instant pressure-proof starters and then treat the result like only one clipboard failed.
This does not prove Mazzulla cannot coach. It does not prove Boston needs to rip apart the roster. It proves something narrower and more useful: the Game 7 lineup was both a debatable coaching choice and a warning that the Celtics did not have enough trusted two-way playoff cover once Tatum disappeared and Hauser stopped bending the defense.
The read moves harder toward coaching failure if later lineup data or reporting shows healthier, more proven combinations were available and ignored without a matchup reason. It moves harder toward roster-depth failure if exit interviews and offseason moves show Hauser was meaningfully compromised and the staff simply did not have enough playable answers.
That is the argument worth having. Not whether Mazzulla gets a free pass. Not whether one lineup card explains the whole loss. The question is whether Boston's emergency plan was good enough for a Game 7 once the first two answers were gone.