Pritchard made little impact in the series, saving for the same sky in Game 2. As he went into his latest prayer, the TD Garden crowd rose in anticipation and then roared in approval. Convinced that the night and the season were now theirs, the Celtics beat the Mavericks 106-88 for a record 18th championship and split with their arch-rivals the Lakers. The title is Boston’s first since losing in the Finals in 2010 and 2022. Jaylen Brown won 7 of 11 media votes to beat Jayson Tatum.
“I can’t even put it into words,” Brown said. “I am blessed and grateful. My teammates were great. They let me lead on both ends of the ball and we just went out and performed on our home floor. [Finals MVP] He could go to anyone. He could have gone to Jason. I can’t say enough about his selfishness and attitude. It was the most important thing we did as a team.
Boston’s glittering victory capped one of its most dominant seasons in recent years. The Celtics are 80-21 overall – 64-18 in the regular season and 16-3 in the playoffs – and have won the Eastern Conference in 14 games over the No. 2 New York Knicks. The Celtics’ whirlwind postseason run, which included the Indiana Pacers’ Eastern Conference Finals run, was the fastest title run since the Golden State Warriors finished 16-1 in 2016-17. Friday’s loss to the Mavericks was their only loss in their last 12 games.
To put away Luka Doncic and the Mavericks for good, the Celtics turned to their textbook balance of scoring and plenty of outside shooting and aggressive defense. Tatum got off to a slow start to take over in the fourth quarter, finishing with a game-high 31 points with eight rebounds and 11 assists. Brown added 21 points, and Jrue Holiday chipped in with 15.
“These past seven years have been an up and down roller coaster,” Tatum said. “I had to listen to all the s— people were saying about me. Tonight, it was worth it. oh my god. We came together and won a championship. Banner number 18 has been hanging over our heads for many years. It still hasn’t been recorded to know whether we will be recorded in history. I’m still trying to process it all. But we did it.
Doncic finished with a team-high 28 points — many of them coming after a big layup from the Celtics — and Mavericks guard Kyrie Irving was again held in check, finishing with 15 points on 5-for-16 shooting. Dallas had no reliable backup plan with its star guards struggling early, shooting 11-for-37 (29.7 percent) from deep.
“I’m sad we lost,” Doncic said. “I’m proud of all the coaches that stepped on the floor, all the people behind it.” [the scenes]. Even though we didn’t win the finals, we had a great season.
Pritchard’s putback was the only basket of the night, but it gave Boston a 67-46 halftime lead, prompting Brown to call his teammate a “f—ing legend” and Celtics coach Joe Mazzula to call him “one of them.” Great competitor and one of my favorite people in the world.
The Celtics, who never trailed, pushed their lead to 26 points in the third quarter before holding on for a victory against a Mavericks team that couldn’t match their energy. Even so, the TD Garden crowd spent the first half managing its collective anxiety as Tatum missed the first four shots, drew a loudmouth, cheered as he completed a touchdown drive and pounded his chest with both hands in the second half. quarter After a dry spell to open the fourth quarter, Brown found the Thunder’s Kristaps Porzingis, who returned to his feet after missing two games with an ankle injury.
Tatum and Brown each heard “MVP” chants as Boston put the finishing touches on the win. When Mavericks coach Jason Kidd pulled his starters at the last minute, Irving gave congratulatory hugs to Tatum and Brown, his former Celtics teammates and the Boston coaching staff. Once Mazula cleared the bench with less than two minutes to play, Tatum caught himself in disbelief before hugging Brown. After the final whistle, buckets of green confetti poured from the ceiling and Tatum lifted his young son, Deuce, into the air to celebrate.
In the postgame locker room, Celtics owner Vic Gruesbeck smoked a cigar, members of the coaching staff popped champagne and players took turns posing with the Larry O’Brien trophy and green championship belt. On the whiteboard, under a sign that read “Every Property Matters,” were written four words: “Flight to Miami Noon.” The festival continues on the South Beach.
Despite their great record and strong finish, the Celtics were never as popular as the previous super teams. There were some obvious explanations: They didn’t have an all-time icon like Michael Jordan, Shaquille O’Neal or Stephen Curry. Miami’s Jimmy Butler, Cleveland’s Donovan Mitchell and Indiana’s Tyrese Halliburton benefited from postseason injury absences. And they’ve spent a lot of time this season trying to escape the shadow cast by their previous playoff upset.
Regardless of the contest, Boston returns as a better, deeper, more focused and more disciplined team than the team that blew a 2-1 lead to the Warriors in the 2022 Finals and fell 3-0 in the 2023 Eastern Conference Finals. On the Miami Heat.
Thanks to the offseason additions of Porzingis and Holiday, Celtics president Brad Stevens put together the NBA’s best talent pool and Mazzula took over a team full of players that started 11-2 and never looked back. Boston ranked first in offense and second in defense during the regular season, followed by fourth in offense and third in defense. Defying their enduring reputation for late-game sloppiness, the Celtics went 21-12 in the regular season with five points in the final five minutes and went 6-0 in the playoffs.
“We’ve had some tough losses at home in the playoffs the last two years,” Tatum said. “We lost the NBA championship at home in front of our fans. We had a chance to beat Miami a few years ago and we lost that. To get the biggest win you can get in front of your home crowd – I felt it was very important to go out there and do everything I could to make sure we won this game.
A severely injured Mazzula has successfully forced Tatum and Brown to take better care of the ball and rely on his offensive philosophy, which relies on catch-and-shoot three-pointers. Incredibly, eight different Celtics players have made at least 100 three-pointers this season.
The Celtics’ versatility on defense was their calling card; They used a dynamic, shifty style to make life difficult for opposing perimeter stars like Doncic and Irving. Porzingis’ arrival has helped their interior defense and rim protection while 38-year-old center Al Horford, who won his first championship in his 17th season, is miles away.
“If you don’t have a group of guys who are willing to buy in and discipline you, you can’t have a philosophy or a way of playing,” Mazzula said. “This group of guys has been through a lot in the league. They know what it takes. It’s been fun to watch the guys grow as a team throughout the year but really work at it. There’s a group of guys in the locker room who decided they wanted to win on day one and they deserve credit.
Boston’s long-awaited championship finally completed the narrative that began with then-Celtics president Danny Ainge’s blockbuster 2013 trade of Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce to the Brooklyn Nets for a package of players, future first-round picks and a trade. Boston was able to secure the draft picks it used to acquire two faces of its 2008 championship team, Brown in 2016 and Tatum in 2017.
The full-circle moment came to be after some painful moments and countless reinventions. Boston hired Stevens from Butler University to lead the rebuilding effort, and he won just 25 games in his first season. The Celtics climbed the ladder slowly, but with countless stars — Isaiah Thomas, Irving, Kemba Walker and Gordon Hayward, among them — they cycled as Tatum and Brown developed.
Brown recalled a 2017 vacation in Spain when he received a 4 a.m. phone call from Ainge.
“Don’t ask me why I got up,” he said. “Danny, ‘How do you feel about Jason Tatum?’ he asked me. I remember playing with him at the Top 100 camp. My roommate was my roommate. [Kevin Durant’s] Elite camp. We played in different games in the same team [high school games]. At the Under Armor All-American game, we were together again. I had many experiences with him. There was a lot of respect. I thought it was a very good choice. Then fast forward, we’ve been winning ever since.”
As the famous faces around them came and went, the passing lane for Tatum and Brown emerged: Boston was good enough to make a deep playoff run, but not enough to win it all. The Celtics have reached the Eastern Conference Finals in six of the past eight seasons, but they’ve made it to the Finals just once before this year and fell on the championship stage to Curry, Draymond Green and Klay Thompson.
Hitting the wall repeatedly leads to Ainge climbing and In 2021, Stevens was promoted from coach to president. Boston turned 35 when Stevens’ coach, Ime Udoka, was fired in 2023 for having an inappropriate relationship with a female co-worker. Mazzula had only been out of coaching in the G League for a few years.
As personnel changed and off-court drama swirled around them, Tatum and Brown blossomed into all NBA players, and the Celtics withstood calls to break up their star wing duo. In a series of brilliant trades, he acquired Stevens Horford, Derrick White, Porzingis and Holiday to build an experienced two-way team around two-way star frontcourt players and seek revenge following last year’s embarrassing season-ending loss to the Heat in Game 7 of the East Finals.
“We’ve learned from all our mistakes,” Brown said. “All our hardships have made us stronger and stronger. All seasons can see it. We made all the sacrifices. We played both ends of the ball at a high level. We didn’t skip any steps. All the times that we’ve come up short, that we’ve thrown the city, that we’ve seemed to humiliate ourselves, that’s how we’ve gotten to where we are now. The doubters may be quiet now, but they’ll be back next year with something to say.
Certainly, the Celtics have spent eight months erasing those painful memories of doubt that they are the league’s best team this season.
“With the Celtics, everyone knows we’re only going to hang championship banners [in the TD Garden rafters]Tatum said. “It’s been a while since we won one. … Hey you [media] People might say we didn’t play anyone to get here. So we have to do it again next year.