A Sense of Doubt blog post #3409 - Boston Celtics win Record 18th Championship!
I have not always been a Celtics fan.
But I love this Boston Celtics team.
Celtics finally break through to win franchise's 18th championship Watch how Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown and the Celtics overcame adversity to add an 18th title to Boston's storied franchise.
BOSTON -- Behind 31 points, 8 rebounds and 11 assists from Jayson Tatum and 21 points, 8 rebounds and 6 assists from Finals MVP Jaylen Brown, the Boston Celtics blew out the Dallas Mavericks 106-88 to win the 2024 NBA Finals, winning a record-setting 18th NBA title on the 16th anniversary of the day they won their 17th championship in this same building.
In doing so, the Celtics passed their forever rivals, the Los Angeles Lakers, for the most titles in NBA history.
"I mean, this is going to be a night that I will remember for the rest of my life, from the game, the celebration, these moments," Tatum said. "Over the last couple years, we had some tough losses at home in the playoffs. We've lost the NBA championship at home in front of our fans. We had a chance to beat Miami in Game 6 a few years ago and lost that one.
"So to have a big win -- the biggest win that you could have in front of your home crowd -- I felt like that was really important to go out there and do everything in my power to make sure we won this game tonight."
Boston, after playing its worst game of the season Friday night in its first chance to close this series out, responded with a wire-to-wire victory Monday. Big performances from Tatum and Brown allowed Boston to put the game away early -- much like it did in 2008, when the Celtics routed the Lakers in Game 6 at TD Garden to win what had been their most recent championship.
The Celtics built a 21-point lead at halftime, with a second Payton Pritchard half-court heave of the series emphatically sending them into the break with a comfortable cushion -- and sending the sellout crowd at TD Garden into a frenzy.
The crowd had been in a fervent state since before the game even began, but particularly when Kristaps Porzingis -- who had missed Games 3 and 4 because of the left leg injury he suffered in Game 2 -- checked into the game midway through the first quarter. Porzingis finished with just five points in 16 minutes but gave Boston some valuable minutes spelling Al Horford off the bench.
Kyrie Irving, meanwhile, continued to struggle in Boston, after admitting Sunday that he has had trouble playing against his former team at TD Garden. After going a combined 13-for-37 in Boston in Games 1 and 2, including 0-for-8 from 3, he finished with 15 points on 5-for-16 shooting in Game 5.
Brown earned his MVP award behind series averages of 20.8 points, 5.4 rebounds and 5 assists, while also consistently guarding Mavericks superstar Luka Doncic.
"I can't even put into words the emotions," Brown said. "It's just I'm blessed and I'm grateful. This was a full team effort. We had a great team. My teammates were great. They allowed me to lead us on both ends of ball, and we just came out and performed on our home floor. It's just amazing.
"You know, it could have gone to anybody. It could have gone to Jayson. Jayson, like I can't talk enough about his selflessness. ... I can't talk enough about his attitude. It's just how he approached not just this series or the Finals but just the playoffs in general. And we did it together as a team, and that was the most important thing."
With the win, the Celtics finished the playoffs 16-3, second only to the 2016-17 Golden State Warriors (16-1) since the NBA went to four best-of-seven rounds of the playoffs in 2003 in an emphatic reversal of Boston's recent playoff disappointments. The Celtics -- until their Monday night victory -- had played more postseason games over an eight-season span without winning a title than any team in NBA history.
That run involved six trips to the Eastern Conference finals, including last year's loss in seven games to the Heat, when Boston became the fourth team ever to force a Game 7 after falling behind 3-0. There was also the loss to the Warriors in the 2022 NBA Finals after winning two of the first three games and leading in the fourth quarter of Game 4, before seeing Golden State celebrate its fourth title of the Stephen Curry era on Boston's famed parquet.
The title checked off boxes for many of Boston's top players. For Tatum and Brown, the 107 games they played together are the most by a duo prior to winning their first NBA championship.
"It means the world," Tatum said on stage. "It's been a long time. And, damn, I'm grateful."
Tatum had the fifth-most career playoff points at the time of his first championship -- trailing only the late Jerry West, LeBron James, Dirk Nowitzki and Kevin Durant.
Horford, meanwhile, played in 186 playoff games before his first title -- the most in NBA history prior to getting a championship.
"The first thing you have to do when you come here is you have to embrace that pressure," Horford said. "And I was OK with being in that position. I was OK if we were getting criticized and we weren't getting it done because I understood what it means playing here.
"Our group, we've had a lot of hardships the last few years. Last year, heartbreaker against Miami, Game 7. Year before, Golden State. It's been building up. But this team has been resilient, and we've continued to work. I'm so proud of Jaylen, and I'm so proud of Jayson. Those two guys continue to take steps forward. People all year criticizing them, all that expectation, all the pressure.
"They did it. And they've done it at a young age. They led our group. I'm just very proud of those guys and to put everything aside and focus on winning."
Monday was the culmination of a journey that began 11 years ago this month at Barclays Center when the Brooklyn Nets spun a blockbuster trade with Boston to acquire Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett for a bevy of draft picks, two of which would become Brown and Tatum in 2016 and 2017.
Soon after the 2013 draft, Boston hired Brad Stevens away from Butler University to be head coach, the job he performed for the next eight seasons before replacing Danny Ainge -- the man who hired him -- as president of basketball operations in 2021.
At that point, Boston was coming off a .500 season and had lost in five games to the Nets in the first round of the playoffs. Since then, Stevens has methodically rebuilt the roster around Brown and Tatum via trades -- bringing back Horford that summer and Derrick White at the ensuing trade deadline -- which helped get Boston to the 2022 Finals. After the conference finals loss last spring, Stevens restructured the roster again, trading away fan favorite and former Defensive Player of the Year Marcus Smart to add Porzingis, then pouncing to acquire Jrue Holiday after the Milwaukee Bucks traded him to the Portland Trail Blazers.
Holiday, who won a title with Milwaukee in 2021, had multiple big performances during this postseason, including Game 2 of the Finals when he scored 26 points on 11-of-14 shooting while the rest of the team went cold from 3-point range. Injuries forced Porzingis to miss all but six of Boston's postseason games, but he scored 20 points off the bench in Game 1 of the Finals, helping the Celtics get off to a strong start against the Mavericks, before providing an emotional boost with his return Monday night.
Stevens also made the bold decision to promote Joe Mazzulla from the back of the bench to be the team's head coach in the wake of Ime Udoka's suspension and eventual firing for violations of team rules shortly before training camp. Mazzulla, 35, has posted a 121-43 record in the regular season over the past two years and became the youngest coach to win an NBA title since Russell did it for the same franchise 55 years ago.
The Celtics had largely controlled the first three games of this series before the Mavericks responded with a demolition of Boston in Dallas on Friday, winning by 38 points in the third-biggest blowout in NBA Finals history and the largest loss for the Celtics in any game since the 2017 conference finals.
But Boston responded with one of its most complete ones of the season in Game 5 -- and, as a result, set a new standard for winning in NBA history.
"This is unreal. I don't think it really has hit and settled in," White said. "This is a special group of guys, a special coaching staff that I'm just thankful to be a part of. Yeah, it's unreal. I'm just trying to enjoy the moment and not get too lit."
https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/40377901/long-awaited-confetti-champagne-boston-celtics-championship-locker-room-wanted-give-us-no
THE CALL ITSELF was not unusual. In the seven years they'd played together, Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown had kept in touch over the summers. Mostly via text, but occasionally they'd run into each other somewhere after the playoffs had ended and before training camp began. They were teammates and colleagues, but not close friends.
Offseasons tend to feel very short when playoff runs are long. And people tend to give each other space during the offseason before coming back to try to climb the mountain together again.
Last summer was no different. The Celtics had played deep into May before losing a Game 7 to the Miami Heat in the conference finals in the most excruciating way -- with Tatum turning an ankle and Brown unable to pick up the slack -- after rallying back from a 3-0 series deficit.
It was the kind of loss that can tear a team apart. Especially a team that was about to get a whole lot more expensive, with Brown eligible to sign a contract to become the highest-paid player in NBA history and Tatum one year away from doing the same.
Both young stars seemed to sense the urgency. The Celtics had been patient with them, even as fans and media had not. But eventually, they both knew that patience would wane.
Brown picked up the phone and suggested they work out together. "We'd never really been in the gym [during the summer] together," Tatum told ESPN. "Maybe socially, but this was really just showing the maturation of us both, and just growing up."
Celtics assistant coach Sam Cassell helped arrange the workouts. Tatum's trainer, Drew Hanlen, ran them. Celtics great Paul Pierce lifted weights with them and sat in the stands at Harvard Westlake High School in Studio City, California, as the two pushed each other and cemented a bond that carried through one of the most dominant seasons in NBA history -- one that ended Monday night with the franchise's 18th NBA title with a 106-88 win over the Dallas Mavericks in Game 5 of the NBA Finals.
"I just think we had passed the phase where we'd both been All-Stars and been on All-NBA teams," Tatum said. "Not saying that s--- is not important, but we'd done it. And god willing, we'll keep doing it. But it was time to start sacrificing points or shot attempts or whatever to win and have the best team in the league."
NBA history is filled with partnerships that fizzled before the stars came together in the way Tatum and Brown did to win the championship this year. Shaquille O'Neal and Penny Hardaway. Gary Payton and Shawn Kemp. Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook. Chris Paul and Blake Griffin.
Sometimes ego is what broke them. Sometimes it was just circumstantial. An opponent they simply couldn't beat. Untimely injuries. An organization that lost faith.
Tatum and Brown had experienced all of those factors in their first seven seasons together, except the last one.
The Celtics have made wholesale changes at every level as Tatum and Brown tried to grow into the players who could finally bring a championship back to Boston. But they never lost faith in their two young stars.
Brad Stevens has gone from coach to president of basketball operations. Ime Udoka was hired, then fired, as coach. Joe Mazzulla was hired as an assistant, then promoted to head coach. No fewer than three veteran stars were brought in to help mentor Tatum and Brown -- Gordon Hayward (2017-2020), Kyrie Irving (2017-2019), Kemba Walker (2019-2021) -- but failed to lead them to a title.
The only configuration left to try was simply to lean completely into Tatum and Brown as the leaders of the team, play a style to maximize their talents, and hope they'd grow enough to win.
"We were always good and talented," Tatum said. "The game needed to slow down. We got to the conference finals two out of our first three years, and it just seemed like we were all so much older than we actually are. Everybody was like, 'Oh, they didn't win it. They can't play together. They should trade him.' And I was always like, 'I just turned 26 and he's 27.'
"Nobody wanted to give us no time."
THE CULMINATION OF Brown and Tatum's partnership was there for all to see Monday night as they traded compliments on the championship dais and postgame news conferences. Brown said Tatum could've won Finals MVP. Tatum said Brown deserved it. They hugged as brothers, then lifted the championship trophy.
Stevens stood off to the side, watching it all unfold.
"It's what it's all about," Stevens told ESPN as he stood in a quiet hallway, celebrating with his family as the party inside the Celtics locker room raged on.
As Stevens outlined what lessons he'd take from this championship, former Celtics player Tacko Fall and his young daughter stopped by to ask the best place to get a car back to his hotel. Stevens stopped what he was doing to help him with the logistics.
"Listen, when we're all done in our time with the Celtics, as coaches, as players, all that's going to really matter is how we treated each other," Stevens said. "Nothing else matters. The banners don't matter because if you win banners and you don't treat each other well, then you never get together later. And the whole point is to have a reunion later."
More than anyone in the organization, Stevens is responsible for the decision to keep giving Brown and Tatum time to build their relationship and grow into the leaders of the franchise.
He was the coach who signed off on drafting each of them, then the executive entrusted with building the right team around them. He was the decision-maker on all of the trade offers that came in from around the league as teams hoped Boston would lose patience with one or both of them.
He was the man, sources said, who said no or decided not to pursue trades for Paul George (2017), Jimmy Butler (2018-19), Kawhi Leonard (2019) Anthony Davis (2019) and Kevin Durant (2022).
Occasionally, these trade discussions would become public, forcing Stevens to try to reassure Brown of the organization's commitment to him.
Tatum often wondered how Brown dealt with hearing his name in trade rumors.
"It would bother me," Tatum said. "Not talking from a pedestal, but I didn't necessarily know what that felt like. But I could just imagine all the hard work that he put in. I saw it every day. Even the strongest-minded person, that would affect you at some point. So I always felt for him in that regard.
"I think now that maybe I could have been better. I never said too much. I always have stayed out of that."
This offseason Stevens finally quashed all those rumors for good by signing Brown to the largest contract in NBA history.
"You worry about how some people would handle that," Stevens said. "Not Jaylen. He's a worker. He just wants to get better. He takes everything as motivation to improve."
Brown rewarded that faith by playing the best basketball of his career in these playoffs, being named the MVP of both the conference finals and Finals.
Occasionally he'd allude to the angst he'd felt in previous years, when he didn't come through on the biggest stage, or heard his name in trade rumors.
"I wasn't expecting it at all," Brown said after winning the Larry Bird MVP Trophy following the Celtics' sweep of the Indiana Pacers in the Eastern Conference finals. "I don't ever win s---."
But after he was named Finals MVP, Brown wasn't interested in using the platform to speak to those who'd doubted him.
"If you would have asked me that maybe a year ago, I would probably say yeah," Brown said. "But just at the point I got to right now, it feels great. Any of the personal awards, it is what it is."
What he was excited about was sharing the award and the moment with Tatum.
"Just our growth together," he said. "We've been through a lot. We've been playing together for seven years now. We've been through a lot, the losses, the expectations. The media have said all different types of things: We can't play together, we are never going to win.
"We heard it all. But we just blocked it out, and we just kept going. I trusted him. He trusted me. And we did it together."
TATUM'S 6-YEAR-OLD son, Deuce, is the physical embodiment of the journey his father has taken with the Celtics.
Tatum was a rookie when Deuce was born in December 2017.
He was just 19 at the time and had kept his impending fatherhood a secret from everyone in the Celtics organization until a few weeks before his birth.
"I was 19 and I was about to have a kid that nobody knew about," Tatum said. "He was born six weeks into the season and I was scared. I was like, 'I don't want to roll over on him ... We [Tatum, Deuce's mother and Tatum's mother, Brandy Cole] all lived in the same apartment building, but we all had three different apartments.
"I saw him every day, and I would come home every day after practice and we would take a two-hour nap on the couch every day together. I'd be burping him and feeding him and changing diapers and all that."
Brown was just 21 back then. And while he'd known Tatum in high school and played summer league together with him in Utah and Las Vegas, their lives were about to diverge.
"I mean I knew right away," said Irving, who was close with Tatum because of their connection to Duke. "I also had my daughter very young, so I knew how his life was going to change. He was scared s---less, just like I was as a father. No one's ready to have a child when they're still living out their childhood dream. But I've seen him grow so much. He's really a great dad."
Monday night, Tatum hoisted Deuce high in the air before he got to do the same with the Larry O'Brien Trophy.
Deuce told his father he was the "best in the world," to which Tatum smiled and said, 'You're damn right I am.'"
Just two years earlier, it had been Deuce who snapped Tatum out of the funk he'd been in since losing the 2022 Finals to the Golden State Warriors. Tatum was inconsolable. He'd turned his phone off and slept all day. He couldn't believe he'd run out of energy with a championship on the line and vowed never to let that happen again.
"I was just exhausted," Tatum told ESPN in 2022. "Mentally, physically. All the stress and pressure that I was putting on myself."
Deuce was the one who finally got his father up and out of the house by asking to go on their annual Father's Day trip to the Caribbean. But Tatum was forever changed by it.
He worked out every day that summer. He lifted weights instead of taking breaks to play golf. He trained with Hanlen to address the weaknesses in his game the Warriors had exploited.
Tatum shot 34% in the paint in the 2022 Finals, making it the worst mark by any player in a Finals over the past 25 years and the third worst by any player in any playoff series over the past 25 years among individuals with at least 50 shot attempts in the paint, according to ESPN Stats & Information.
This year he completely flipped the script, shooting 51% in the paint and 47% overall against the Mavericks. According to Second Spectrum, Tatum recorded a 58.3% blow-by rate on drives in the Finals, the second highest by any player in a series in the past 10 years.
"It took being relentless," Tatum said. "It took being on the other side of this and losing in the Finals and being at literally the lowest point in a basketball career that you could be, to next year, to the following year, thinking that was going to be the time, and come up short again.
"You know what it feels like to be on the other side of this and be in the locker room and hearing the other team celebrating, hearing them celebrate on your home floor. That was devastating.
"Now, to elevate yourself in a space that, you know, all your favorite players are in, everybody that they consider greats or legends have won a championship, and all of the guys I looked up to won a championship, multiple championships.
"Now I can, like, walk in those rooms and be a part of that. It's a hell of a feeling. This is more -- I dreamed about what it would be like, but this is 10 times better."
EVERY RETELLING OF Tatum and Brown's story will have some characterization of their personal relationship. Whether they always got along this well. Whether there was drama or jealousy behind the scenes. Whether they each believed the other was the right partner or had the right skill set to win together.
"The whole Jayson-Jaylen discussion in the national media is laughable to all of us," Stevens said. "I think Jaylen said it best with his line a few weeks ago where he said, 'I don't have the time to give a f---.'"
In the glow of victory, it's easy to color over all those questions. They are irrelevant now, because they won together.
Hanlen spent Monday morning flying back from working out a new client in Greece and thinking about what to text Tatum to inspire him to close out the title in Game 5. He looked up Michael Jordan's title in 1998 and Kobe Bryant's in 2010.
"I said to Jayson, 'What do you remember about that series? [Michael Jordan's] pull-up clincher at the end of Game 6, right? But do you remember that they lost Game 1? Do you remember that he missed a game winner? Do you remember? He was 9-for-26 in a Game 5 loss.
"All you remember was the game, the clinching pull-back game winner,"
"My big thing to him was, 'Hey, no one really cares what you did game by game. All that really matters is if you hang a banner."
Stevens has been in Boston for the entire duration of Tatum and Brown's partnership. His perspective is unique, having been their coach and now the team's lead executive.
"To me, teams thrive when there's little drama and they're moving in one direction," Stevens said.
The Celtics have had very little drama this season. They were the best team in the regular season with 64 wins. They went 16-3 in the playoffs, winning eight games by 15 or more points. Offensively they are among the best in NBA history, scoring 122.2 points per 100 possessions.
The 35-year-old Mazzulla is the coach of record for this season. Stevens hired him as an assistant coach just five years ago, a giant leap of faith in a guy who'd never coached above Division II in college or in the NBA.
But Stevens had faith in him immediately. He liked his dedication to his craft and discipline. He liked his analytical mind. But mostly he liked his passion.
"He may have been unproven to other people, but not to me," Stevens said. "He was put in a tough situation last year. But he grew from it, and this year he got a chance to really prepare for a season."
Mazzulla talks often about having a "growth mentality." He used the phrase last week when he was asked about Brown's development. He used it throughout the season when talking about how the team stayed sharp despite having such a huge lead in the standings.
Monday night he used the phrase when talking about how he starts each day in the cold tub at his house.
Thirty-nine degrees, not the relatively balmy 55 degrees of the tub in the Celtics' training facility.
"I started doing it for psychological growth," he said. "To purposely put myself in an uncomfortable situation where everything hurts and you have to learn about yourself."
Cryotherapy, Mazzulla said, is "too easy."
And when he really wants to challenge himself, he'll plunge under the water and hold his breath for 15-20 seconds.
"You have to stay in long enough," he said. "That's how you grow."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2024/06/18/jayson-tatum-jaylen-brown-celtics-championship/
Boston’s star duo deserves this Celtics celebration
In the NBA Finals, Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown
finally secured the only win that matters to their franchise.
They took an arduous path to the franchise’s 18th title, only for it to seem easy at the end. With a 106-88 victory over the Dallas Mavericks that was in hand by halftime, the Celtics earned a Monday night stroll to the TD Garden podium. They had learned all the lessons, felt all the pain, conquered all the doubt. They were meant to clinch on this night, 16 years to the day after their most recent championship. Their franchise players, Tatum and Brown, had been patient enough.
They had spent seven years together, chasing a trophy, the only thing that could verify them as great Celtics. They labored for 107 postseason games, the most of any star duo before winning a championship. They watched the organization cycle through big-name veterans who were supposed to lead them while they were young — Isaiah Thomas, Kyrie Irving, Gordon Hayward, Kemba Walker — and they had to adjust their games through the shuffle of three head coaches.
As NBA players, Tatum and Brown were born into the success, privilege and burden of playing for the Celtics. They’ve been ring-shopping since they entered the league. In 2016, Boston drafted Brown, and in his rookie season, the team finished 53-29 and advanced to the Eastern Conference finals. In 2017, Boston drafted Tatum, and the team proceeded to win 55 games and return to the conference finals. It was a blessing to win so young. But it also guaranteed playoff heartbreak for the tandem, both of whom were drafted No. 3 overall.
“Normally, when you’re a top-five draft pick, you go to a lottery team that’s rebuilding,” Tatum said. “I was in a unique situation from the rest of the guys in my draft class in that the Celtics were the number [two] seed in the East. We were competing for a championship ever since I got here.”
Brown and Tatum didn’t have to endure seven-game losing streaks and 30-win seasons as they developed. Then again, they didn’t get to hone their craft in the comfort of relative privacy, away from the expectations and scrutiny. Instead, every setback was a referendum on their level of stardom, their trust in their teammates and in each other, and their competence as winning players.
“I think we learned,” Brown said. “I think we learned from all of our mistakes. All of our adversity has made us stronger, made us tougher.”
While Tatum has been the more celebrated star, this postseason run belonged to Brown. After Boston completed a five-game series victory, Brown was named the Finals MVP. He was also MVP of the Eastern Conference finals. During this entire run, Brown was a two-way menace, altering the game with his energy and his skill. Yet for as much as he likes recognition, he craved team success above all. By making sacrifices and playing team basketball, Brown found the individual accolades came naturally. There is no need to wonder whether he surpassed Tatum. They did it together, finally. They did it with their teammates. The Celtics were connected.
“We’ve been through a lot — the losses, the expectations,” Brown said of his relationship with Tatum. “The media have said all different types of things: We can’t play together, and we’re never going to win. We heard it all. But we just blocked it out, and we just kept going. I trusted him. He trusted me.”
Lowe: Here's the code the Boston Celtics finally cracked to raise banner No. 18
THE GOOD NEWS for those who don't quite know how to contextualize these Boston Celtics after a dominant-by-any-measure championship season: They will return more or less intact to make another run at it next season, with a chance to cement their place as one of the great teams of the modern era.
Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown are 26 and 27, respectively. Tatum has made first-team All-NBA in three straight seasons. Brown made second-team last season and barely missed this season. His steely postseason, crowned with Finals MVP, indicates he might have another level to hit. Boston might not have a traditional MVP centerpiece -- Tatum finished sixth in the voting this season and has never finished above fourth -- but if Brown's ascent continues, they could boast two of the top 10 or 12 players over the next few seasons. Tatum might not have hit his ceiling either.
The core players around them, the threads connecting the Danny Ainge and Brad Stevens regimes, are all under contract for next season and in some cases beyond. Only Al Horford, the stalwart whose reacquisition marked the first salvo of the Stevens era, is old in NBA terms. There are what should be smooth extension talks coming for Tatum and Derrick White, and perhaps trickier ones surrounding Sam Hauser and Kristaps Porzingis (later in Porzingis' case). The team will get ultra expensive. The second apron hems you in. But you live to get a team like this. You pay for it and figure out the rest later.
The NBA has not had a repeat champion since the Warriors in 2018. Even the Denver Nuggets, with the world's best player, seemed to publicly downplay the importance of repeating -- focusing instead on winning multiple titles over the next decade in San Antonio Spurs-esque fashion.
Boston should take the opposite approach. Chase the repeat. State it as its goal. Break the no-repeat stretch, and its historical standing becomes beyond dispute. If the Celtics stay healthy, they will have everything they need. They should enter next season as favorites.
THERE HAVE BEEN dominant regular-season teams that were a bit less dominant in postseason title runs. There have been dominant postseason teams that coasted through the regular season. The 2000-01 Lakers of Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant are the quintessential example. They went 15-1 in the playoffs and mauled opponents by 12.8 points per game -- after going 56-26 with a plus-3.7 differential in the regular season.
Those Lakers gain historical steam because they three-peated, and the first of those three teams -- the 1999-2000 version -- had almost the inverse campaign of its successor: historically great regular season, difficult playoff road. It went 67-15 with a plus-8.5 margin and gutted out a 15-8 playoff record with a plus-2.3 margin.
These Celtics check every statistical benchmark. They went 64-18 and then 16-3 in the playoffs. They piled up huge scoring margins in both segments: plus-11.3 in the regular season, plus-8.0 in the playoffs. The latter figure was above 10 before their 38-point drubbing in Game 4.
Even so, the record and point differential together put Boston in rare air. The only weak spot is in their slate of postseason opponents, perhaps the overall state of the East, and in the vague feeling that they were or at least seemed more vulnerable than the NBA's historic titans: that their offense was prone to aimlessness at inopportune times, in part because they might not (yet) boast any one superstar at the level of the immortals who usually helm title teams.
Some of that was the collective NBA hive mind conflating the painful exits of past Celtics teams with what this reinvented bunch was doing right before our eyes. The Celtics cannot help that their East playoff opponents were beset by ill-timed injuries, or that the alleged giants of the East wilted early amid injuries to Joel Embiid and Giannis Antetokounmpo.
It should not be glossed over that Boston played 12 of 19 playoff games without Porzingis. His 59 joyous Finals minutes were a reminder of the higher gear Boston hit when fully formed.
The Celtics just became the seventh team since the NBA-ABA merger to claim the title after winning at least 55 games and outscoring regular-season opponents by 10-plus points per game, according to Basketball-Reference. The six previous teams to hit that statistical triple: three Michael Jordan Chicago Bulls teams (1991-92, 1995-96, 1996-97), the first Stephen Curry-era Golden State Warriors title team (2014-15), the first Curry/Kevin Durant Warriors team (2016-17) and, remarkably, the 2007-08 Celtics.
Of those six teams above, only two -- the 1995-96 Bulls and 2016-17 Warriors -- had both a better playoff point differential than these Celtics and three or fewer postseason losses. The list of Tier 1 title teams obviously runs deeper than these seven.
Golden State in Durant's second year there followed a fairly unremarkable 58-win regular season by going 16-5 with a plus-10 scoring margin in its repeat run. The 1996-97 Bulls won 69 games with a massive plus-10.8 differential and went 15-4 in the playoffs, outscoring postseason opponents by 5.5 points per game.
The 1985-86 Celtics, still considered the greatest modern Boston team, went 67-15 with a plus-9.4 scoring margin -- barely under the 10-point threshold. They were 15-3 in the postseason and blitzed those opponents by 10.3 points -- well above Boston's final margin this season.
The Lakers of the following season -- the gold standard of Showtime -- went 65-17 with a plus-9.3 margin, ripped off that same 15-3 playoff record and obliterated postseason opponents by 11.4 points per game.
Other teams that fall short of some of these statistical criteria deserve a seat at the table based on the rivals they overcame.
The 2013-14 Spurs won 62 games and outscored postseason opponents by 9.3 points en route to a rollicking revenge stomping of the two-time defending champion Miami Heat. San Antonio went "only" 16-7 in those playoffs, with three of those losses coming in the first round.
The best Heat team of the LeBron James era -- 2012-13 -- won 66 regular-season games and gutted through a 16-7 playoff run, needing the full seven games in the Finals and one Ray Allen miracle to upend the Spurs. Those Heat were plus-7.9 in the regular season and plus-6.4 in the playoffs -- very strong numbers. They also had arguably the greatest player ever at his apex.
The Heat and Spurs had to go through each other, just as the 1980s Celtics and Lakers battled. Miami achieved a repeat.
The first Bad Boys Detroit Pistons title team went 63-19, outscoring opponents by almost six points per game, and followed with a rampaging postseason: 15-2, plus-7.7. That is one fewer loss than Boston this year, with almost the same point differential. Detroit extinguished the embers of past dynasties in Boston and Los Angeles, and held off the all-timer that was forming in Chicago.
The 1982-83 Philadelphia 76ers swept the Lakers in the Finals and brushed aside the team that swept the Celtics (the Milwaukee Bucks) -- ending the playoffs 12-1 with a plus-6.5 differential. The Fo-Fo-Fo Sixers won more regular-season games than this season's Celtics -- 65 -- with a fat plus-7.7 margin
The Spurs played to a 60-win pace in the lockout-shortened 1998-99 season, went 15-2 in the playoffs and put up huge scoring margins. Scanning before the merger ropes in a few more all-time teams.
In chatting with coaches and executives before the Game 4 loss to Dallas, the closest thing to a consensus was that the Celtics indeed stand as a truly great single-season team but that it felt exuberant even before that Game 4 loss to place them in the most hallowed tier alongside the 1990s Bulls; 2017 and 2018 Warriors; 1986 Celtics; 1987 Lakers; the three-peat Lakers of Shaq and Kobe; maybe a few others.
Their statistical edge on the next tier of champions -- including several teams listed above -- now rests mostly on regular-season point differential. They compiled some of that against a weak Eastern Conference. Had they lost Game 4 against the Mavs by a normal margin -- say 10 or 12 points -- their playoff point differential would hover near the very top. Now it's less special. That one game warped their postseason numbers that much.
How much should we weigh that game, given Boston was up 3-0 and won in five? You can't dismiss it. It was a bad loss. But blowing away the Mavs again 106-88 in Game 5 transforms it into an outlier amid a postseason romp.
In the end, these Celtics -- 64 wins, all-time regular-season point differential, strong 16-3 playoffs -- can go toe-to-toe with anyone in this second tier of great modern champions. Some might prefer the 1989 Pistons or 2015 Warriors -- among the closest doppelgangers -- but Boston boosters can marshal some pretty strong statistical evidence for their own case. The mid-2010s Heat and Spurs and 1983 Sixers have compelling arguments too. It's blurry in this glorious range.
This murkier placement seems pretty fair given the competition the Celtics have faced -- again, not their fault! The East fell apart around them. Neither conference supplied a seasoned champion for them to vanquish.
The path to a repeat could be much thornier. It took a long time for the Celtics of Tatum and Brown to reach the top. Now they get to try to stay there.
In the seventh season together, after years of external noise and skepticism, the Jayson Tatum-Jaylen Brown experiment paid off -- with the Celtics' long-awaited 18th championship. Brian Babineau/NBAE via Getty Images
IT IS A testament to how strange the team-building process can be -- how every team needs luck -- that only one player in Boston's postseason rotation was selected with an original Celtics pick: Payton Pritchard.
The Celtics' journey here started on draft night in 2013, when they traded Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett to the Brooklyn Nets for a series of unprotected picks and swaps that eventually netted both Tatum and Brown. On that same night, the Sixers traded Jrue Holiday to kick off The Process. A decade later, another spasm of trades ended with Holiday as the final piece in Boston -- just as he once was in Milwaukee.
There are alternative universes in which Boston trades one of Tatum and Brown -- or the picks that became them -- to speed up their process and challenge LeBron James' hegemony in the late 2010s East. They had talks surrounding Paul George, Jimmy Butler, Kawhi Leonard, Anthony Davis and Kevin Durant. Their godfather offer to the Charlotte Hornets for the No. 9 pick in 2015 -- with an eye on Justise Winslow -- included one future Nets pick, per league sources.
They never agreed to any such deal -- wagering in the end on continuity, on Brown and Tatum keeping a title window open for a half-decade or longer. (On the night they drafted Tatum No. 3 in 2017, Boston tried to acquire a second lottery pick in hopes of selecting Donovan Mitchell, league sources said. After the draft, they engaged Utah in talks for Mitchell -- which Utah rebuffed, sources said.)
Tatum is a very good playmaking wing, but he has never averaged more than 4.9 assists. (He has exceeded that in playoff runs -- including averaging 6.3 dimes this postseason.) Brown has never averaged more than 3.6 assists.
This is part of what people hint at when they argue Boston does not have any one offensive player on the level you typically see atop all-time teams: the absence of any "A" playmaker. White and Holiday are hybrid guards. Holiday has topped seven dimes in several seasons, but he has always been best as a secondary ball handler.
Player by player, Ainge and Stevens built a unique team constructed to mitigate that weakness -- with strengths that would ultimately render it meaningless. Coach Joe Mazzulla, a fearless tinkerer, leaned further into those strengths than most coaches might.
The Celtics are not the first team to try putting five shooters on the floor. Enough others have attempted it that coaches and executives discovered a potential weakness: minimal rim pressure. A lot of five-out lineups lacked the archetypal rim-running center or any reliable means of playing inside-out basketball.
Some five-out offenses devolved into like-sized players pinging the ball around the perimeter as like-sized defenders switched everything and kept the ball out of the paint. Other five-out groupings were soft on defense.
Robert Williams III was the last player standing between Boston and semipermanent five-out play -- the rim-runner, the lob threat, the shot-blocker.
The Celtics acquired Porzingis to usurp Williams' starting spot, and then included Williams in the Holiday trade. The Celtics might not have been sure of it then, but they had cracked the code of five-out basketball -- a code imitators will now chase.
On paper, the Celtics do not appear to make much use of the paint. They don't get to the rim or the foul line much. They are an average offensive rebounding team. They lead the league in 3s by a mile. But volume is one ingredient in Boston cracking that code. If you are going to play this way, you have to really do it. Every starter and hopefully everyone in the rotation has to be a volume shooter. If the NBA is a variance game now, put yourself in position to win it.
But the way Boston generates those 3s is what stands out. The Celtics' starting five is huge and physical. White and Holiday are 6-4, but they play much bigger; Holiday routinely bullies larger players.
Both are willing screeners. Opponents stash their smallest or weakest defenders on one of them -- meaning White or Holiday can drag that defender toward Tatum and Brown by setting screens for them. Tatum and Brown are classic apex wings -- burrowing drivers who make tough midrange shots.
Those four players use the screen, the pass and the drive to penetrate the defense -- and then kick the ball out for the best 3s: open catch-and-shoot looks. Boston's pristine spacing makes the passing reads easier. The floor is uncluttered, every passing lane vast. Boston has a bunch of good passers, screeners and cutters operating in wide-open spaces. That can work just as well as having one A-plus orchestrator. Boston might not have an MVP-level superstar -- Tatum is close -- but having five top-40-ish players within this ecosystem amounts to the same or more.
Marcus Smart was a vital Celtic, but White and Holiday are snappier read-and-react players. Both are better shooters than Smart. They settled into clear supporting roles behind Tatum and Brown. Smart often played more as their equal. The floor and the hierarchy are clearer now. Tatum and Brown get off the ball more willingly -- confident they will get it back if the game dictates they should.
Porzingis added the final touch -- another method of puncturing the paint when defenses switched: mashing smaller defenders on post-ups.
Everything crescendoed in the third quarter of Game 3 -- the quarter that effectively cinched the championship. The Celtics tore the Mavs apart from every area -- with Brown and Tatum often assisting each other.
That last play has echoes of Dwyane Wade and LeBron James finding each other on cuts against the Indiana Pacers a dozen years ago in their first title run together. Brown and Tatum had seven assists to each other in Game 3, tied for their highest total in any game, per ESPN Stats & Information. What a fitting capstone.
The other end of that equation was Boston's defense taking away the same kinds of 3s its offense was creating. The Celtics' collective size allows them to switch without getting ensnared in mismatches -- to wall off the paint and stay home on shooters.
Their wings are versatile enough for Boston to play with matchups -- including slotting Tatum on the Mavs' centers, with Horford and Porzingis cross-matched on other players. That gambit muddied Doncic's pick-and-roll game and vaporized the Mavs' alley-oop attack.
Boston's best offensive players are very good defenders. That is rare even among elite teams. The Celtics do not have to compromise on one end to lift the other -- ever.
Mazzulla often reminds the media the two ends are connected. That shows up most in transition. The Celtics' defense catapults them into the open floor, where they feast on 3s. Their spacing on offense -- the number of guys spotting up around the arc -- puts them in ideal position to retreat on defense.
Boston figured out five-out basketball like no team has before. The Celtics demolished the league and carved out a place in modern basketball history. Where exactly? Let's see what the future holds.
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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2406.18 - 10:10
- Days ago = 3273 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
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