Nikola Vučević is back in the playoffs, and for the 35-year-old center, the timing feels almost overdue. Boston opens its first-round series against the Philadelphia 76ers in the 2026 NBA Playoffs on Sunday afternoon, giving Vučević his first postseason game since 2022 and a chance to play meaningful basketball for a team that finished 56-26 and earned the Eastern Conference's second seed.
“I'm very excited to be back in the playoffs,” Vučević said on April 19, 2026. He added that it had been a couple of years since he had last played in the postseason and that getting there is what every player wants, then seeing how far the run can go. He said Boston is the first team he has been on that has a real chance to go deep, and that he wants to make the most of it one game at a time.
That has not been the shape of most of his career. Vučević, a former first-round pick and two-time All-Star in his 15th NBA season, has played in only 16 playoff games and has not gotten past the first round since his rookie season in 2012. He also said he had never before been on a playoff team with a top-5 seed, which makes this run with Boston different from the seasons that came before it.
The Celtics were built for this kind of stage. They finished the regular season with 56 wins, held the No. 2 seed in the East and entered the postseason with the kind of résumé Vučević said speaks for itself. He said he knew Boston as one of the league's best teams because of its history and the culture around it, and that when he was traded there in February he saw it as a chance to compete for something that matters late in his career.
There is also old history folded into this matchup. Vučević once played three minutes in an Eastern Conference Semifinals series for Philadelphia 14 years ago, and Boston eliminated the 76ers in seven games in that series. Now he meets the same opponent again, only this time in Celtics colors, with the stakes and expectations much higher than they were at the start of his career.
He did not pretend the matchup would be easy. Vučević said the Sixers play tough and that Boston has to be at its best, then repeated that the series starts today and the only sensible approach is to take it one game at a time. For a player who has spent most of 15 seasons waiting for a spring like this, the next few games will say more about his late-career arc than any regular-season stat line ever could.
