I think we have all been guilty of some fools gold.
2017ECF Was total unadulterated luck. Still not sure how we even won a game against Cleveland. But we had a moniker. ECF Finalists.
2019ECF Was probably a better indication of where this team was (especially after '18). Engaged Kyrie (during the season at least) and Growing JB and JT. Had we a healthy Gordon then maybe we had a punchers chance. Unfortunately something happened with Kyrie after that season and he left along with Gordons injury taking alot of the picks and shovels with him.
2020 It Never should have been the Celtics Heat anyway. Milwaukee collapsed after a cake walk into the playoffs and Toronto and Philly were Very Good teams. Regardless this was the true Fools gold. We found a nugget that looked yellow. This made us think we were on the precipice. When in reality it should have been another Semifinals series loss. Especially without effective Gordon or Kemba.
That brought us to 21.
We all thought we had a gold mine and expected a big strike. Reality is while there is certainly the chance of precious metal we still havent moved enough earth to actually find it yet.
We are all pissed that we "are missing our window" when in reality....our window probably shouldnt have even opened yet. They Good Kyrie run and the Lucky Miami meeting made us think it was open before it truly was.
Is this season dissapointing? Yup. Cuz I like many of you thought it really was gold we had already found. In in reality we are still on the right river bend we just havent dug enough. AND we may still need some more (/different) crew.
Lets see where we are next year.
I agree with your overall point that expectations for this year were probably inflated, but I don't really agree about your characterization of 2017 and 2020 being essentially all luck. In 2017 they were the #1 seed. Now yeah I think everyone knew that Cleveland was probably the better team - Cleveland was 17/5 to win the finals going into the postseason. But after that Boston and Toronto were both 30-1, with the Wizards trailing significantly at 50-1. So, basically, Boston was pretty clearly one of the best three teams in the East that year. Not that surprising, given that, that they made the ECF.
I wasn't able to find a definitive pre-postseason odds list for last year but I think the consensus again was that while Boston was not the favorite, they were in the Top 3, with the Bucks being the consensus #1 in the East and Toronto being #2 but with Boston not super far behind. Again, not that surprising that a top-3 team in the conference would make the ECF.
Put another way, the 2017 and 2020 teams (and the 2019 team) were very good teams, and the 2021 team is not a very good team at all. We can and are debating the reasons for that, but I don't think it's right to say, for example, that the 2020 team wasn't actually that much better than this year's team. It was clearly much better than this year's team, as both the eye test and a simple look at the standings would show.