From my seat in press row at TD Garden, you can see the entire arena. The benches, the matchups, the way a possession starts to form before it fully develops. It’s a different way of watching the game, a little more removed than being down by the railing before tip, where everyone is leaning forward trying to catch a glimpse of warmups or an autograph from their favorite player.

Just a few hours earlier, that’s where I was, moving along the baseline and talking to whoever had gotten there early enough to be close to the action. Different groups, different ages, different reasons for being here, but the conversations started to reveal similar themes after a while. Some people were born into loving this team. Some picked it up along the way. Some had a specific player that pulled them in. Others couldn’t really explain it beyond the fact that it stuck.

Now they’re all somewhere in the building, scattered across different sections, watching the same game unfold.

About 45 minutes before tip, I had stopped near the sideline and talked to a father and his son, both born and raised in Boston. The father didn’t hesitate when I asked how long he’d been a fan. “I’m 42,” he said. “So we can say 42 years.” His 13-year-old son followed right behind him with same answer in his own way. “You were born into it,” his dad said, smiling. That part didn’t need much explaining.

The kid was wearing a Tatum jersey, but it didn’t stop there. He lifted it to show the Tatum shirt underneath. Tatum socks. Tatum sneakers (“The new 4s”, he told me, a non-sneakerhead who still wanted him to think I knew and loved them). His dad laughed and said it didn’t matter the time of year or the time of day, he was probably wearing something with Tatum on it.

When I asked what stood out about this team, they answered right away. “We’re so deep,” he said. “Every single person that comes onto the floor can score, they can defend.” His son nodded. Same answer.

Early on, it didn’t look like that depth was going to matter. The Celtics opened cold, missing shots they usually make, the kind of start that brings a low murmur across the building before it builds into something louder. A Jaylen Brown dunk finally broke through and the place responded the way it always does, rising together, a quick reminder of how quickly things can change in here.

That idea of depth came back not long after. The bench started to chip in with Payton Pritchard pushing the pace, making things happen in a way that felt familiar after Game 4. Even when the shots weren’t falling from deep, the Celtics found ways to stay in front. They had more options. More answers.

A little further down the baseline before the game, I had talked to a group of college-aged guys, each with a half-full cup of beer, watching warmups. I learned that two of them were Celtics fans. Two of them weren’t, at least not yet.

“Depth goes crazy,” one of them said when I asked what he loves about the team, without much hesitation. His friends nodded, half agreeing, half laughing, likely about the fact his buddy was getting interviewed by a member of the media.

That depth showed up throughout the first half. It wasn’t one player carrying things. The responsibility and production moved around from possession to possession. One possession it was Brown getting downhill, the next it was Tatum creating space off the dribble, then Pritchard pushing the tempo, then Vooch throwing one down.

The ball didn’t stick. The game didn’t feel heavy. Not yet at least.

Before the game started, I stopped at one point to take a picture of two older-looking gentlemen, who I would learn were brothers. They had grown up in Boston after moving here from Uganda. They didn’t need much time to answer how long they’d been fans.

“Forever,” one of them said.

There wasn’t much elaboration beyond that, but in a way there didn’t need to be. They had been to games before, so they knew what this place felt like, especially during this time of year. That part came through in how casually they talked about it, like the Celtics had always been part of their lives, even though they were born 6,900 miles away.

Sitting up top in press row, it’s easy to forget how many different paths lead people into this building. Sure, you can see the whole arena, but the paths people took to get there aren’t always as clear.

Game 5 settled into something tense by the third quarter. The Celtics had a lead, but the Sixers kept chiseling away at it, steadily and methodically. Philadelphia kept finding ways to keep the score close. Joel Embiid looked much improved from Game 4 and more like the former MVP version of himself, which certainly helped.

At one point, with the Celtics trying to create some separation, Jordan Walsh made a play that barely registers in a box score. A hustle steal, a sprint the other way, and a drawn foul.

The reaction from the crowd was immediate — loud in a way that didn’t match the scale of the play, at least not on paper. Walsh turned and embraced it, breaking the fourth wall between fans and players. That was all it took to set the crowd into a frenzy.

That exchange, small as it was, felt like a perfect example of how connected everything was in that moment. The crowd sees it. The player feels it. In TD Garden, the energy can often be a two-way street.

Later in the quarter, Pritchard hit a three right in front of the Sixers bench and held his stare for a beat, like he wanted them to sit with it. Another moment that doesn’t change the outcome on its own, but adds to everything around it.

By the end of the third, the Celtics were still in front, but the margin had narrowed to one point, 86-85. The building felt it. From way up high, I could hear the noise shift from confident to urgent. Still loud, but tighter than before.

Earlier in the night, I had talked to a family that made the drive up from Connecticut. The dad leaned into the conversation as soon as I brought up past teams, talking about Bird like he had been waiting for the chance. The passing, the feel, the way everything seemed a step ahead.

His daughters listened, one in a Tatum jersey, the other in a Brown jersey, exchanging looks that suggested they had heard some version of this before. Classic Dad.

When I asked what stood out about this team, he kept it simple.

“They all trust each other.”

That idea held for most of the night. It showed up in the way the ball moved, in the way players stayed with possessions even after something went wrong. Brown going over to Vučević after a couple missed threes, making sure he wasn’t dissuaded from firing away on the next open one. Tatum and Pritchard talking through something after a defensive breakdown, both of them coming at it from the same place, a shared desire to win.

It felt steady. It felt like the Celtics.

The fourth quarter didn’t follow that pattern.

Philadelphia hit shots early, getting production from Embiid, Maxey, and even Grimes, who found himself at the line twice after being fouled on three-point attempts. The Celtics had an impossible time answering. A couple open looks missed, then another, and the rhythm that had carried them through the first three quarters started to slip.

At first, it didn’t feel like anything more than a bad stretch. That happens in closeout games like this. As a Celtics fan, you kind of expect it to turn back the other way eventually.

It didn’t.

Early in the fourth, the lead finally flipped in Philly’s favor. The crowd got louder, trying to pull it back and reacting to every defensive possession like it might be the one that starts a run. A Hauser three gave the Garden a jolt. Another miss took it right back out.

From up top, you can feel that shift even if you can’t quite hear individual voices. The noise tightens. Reactions get sharper. Every possession clearly starting to matter a little more than the one before it.

Somewhere in there, I started thinking about the people I had talked to before the game. The kid in the Tatum jersey there with his dad. The family that made the drive in from Connecticut. The brothers who said they’d been fans forever. The young girl who was at her first Celtics game in person.

My first instinct was to feel bad for them. Like this was going to be the part they remembered. But looking down at the floor, then back out into the crowd, that didn’t really line up with what was happening.

I caught myself reacting at one point, as a fan and not the version of me that was there as media. “FOUL!” came out of me before I could stop it after Grimes relentlessly hounded Jaylen Brown in the backcourt with a level of physicality that I clearly felt was inappropriate. I looked around, hoping fellow media members weren’t staring in my direction. Luckily, or maybe not, everyone couldn’t look away from the nightmare that was the fourth quarter of Game 5.

The Celtics couldn’t find a stretch where everything clicked again. Shots that had fallen earlier stayed out, and Philadelphia kept making enough to keep the distance. The Celtics would go on to finish with only 11 total points in the quarter.

Even as the outcome became obvious, people stayed in it.

They stood. Clapped. Waited.

After the game, Joe Mazzulla talked about perspective. He said it wasn’t all bad, that there were stretches they could build from.

Jaylen Brown kept it simple. They weren’t good enough, and they’d have to be better the next time out.

Both things can be true.

After the final buzzer, I made my way down from the press section and onto the concourse. There were still fans lingering. Some standing in the aisles, some drifting closer to the court now that the game was over, others taking pictures, clearly not ready to let the night end.

Besides a small group chanting “Embiid sucks,” most people actually seemed surprisingly chipper. They were talking, smiling, taking it in before being told to go.

I’ve been to enough of these that my instinct after a loss is to get out quickly. Clear out, complain, then move on to the next one.

A lot of people didn’t seem interested in doing that.

Maybe it was their first game. Maybe it was the trip into the city. Or maybe it was simply something they’d been looking forward to for a long time. Whatever had brought them there, they stayed for as long as they could.

I wondered if the father and son I had talked to earlier were still somewhere in the building, or the family from Connecticut, or the brothers who had grown up here after coming from somewhere else. The college bros had probably already moved on to Tavern in the Square by then.

On my way to the postgame press conference, I caught myself changing my tune.

A few minutes earlier, I had been sitting in press row, frustrated like everyone else, watching Game 5 slip away in a way that was so un-Celtics-like. Now, I was walking into a room where Jaylen Brown was about to answer questions a few feet away, Jayson Tatum not far behind him.

It’s a strange shift. You spend the whole night thinking about the game the way a fan would, then you find yourself in a position you could only dream of from the outside.

I started thinking about the people I had talked to before tip. What they would’ve thought if they were in that room. If they were sitting where I was sitting.

The result still mattered. It always does.

But so did this.

Still, the result of Game 5 didn’t give them what they wanted. It didn’t give any of us what we wanted.

Sometimes it goes the way you hope, and sometimes it doesn’t. The people who have been around long enough understand that, and the ones who are new to it will learn. Either way, we all come back just the same.

Before the game, I took another photo of a group of three adults, beaming with excitement to the point where I knew I had to talk to them. After snapping their photo, I realized English wasn’t their first language, so the woman in the group smartly pulled out her phone and began translating my questions in real time.

After some back and forth, I learned that one of them had attended Boston College when he was younger, and fell in love with the Celtics during his time here. He was now here with his two friends, who had never stepped foot inside an NBA arena until that night.

In an effort to keep my questions simple, I looked at the woman, gestured around us, and asked, “What do you think?”

She looked out across the floor, took it in for a second, and gave the same gesture back.

Then she said one word, her first in English during our brief conversation.

“Magic,” she said.

Even after a tough loss, I couldn’t agree with her more.