BOSTON — Long gone are the days when the Boston Celtics could strut through the regular season and then keep on keepin’ on right through the playoffs, after which the great Red Auerbach would kick back and fire up his patented Hoyo de Monterrey victory cigar. (And, oh my, how every fan in every other NBA port of call hated that.)
In the modern NBA, dynasties just don’t happen. Your team may well be blessed with a couple of great players, and also two or three pretty good ones, and yet it might take a year or two or three before everything culminates, finally, with a championship. If it happens at all.
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The 2023-24 Boston Celtics, newly crowned champions of the NBA, are a case in point. Their 106-88 victory over the Dallas Mavericks in Game 5 of the NBA Finals Monday night at TD Garden makes it 18 championships for this iconic NBA franchise, and, yes, that means Jayson Tatum sits at the table with Paul Pierce. It means Jaylen Brown rides with Larry Bird. It means Kristaps Porziņģis and Bob Cousy can look up to the rafters, together, and share championship moments.
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Celtics beat Mavs, win 18th NBA championship
But no team in Celtics history had to work to make it happen the way these guys did. Recent seasons were built around a “Tatum-Brown window,” or, if you will, a “Brown-Tatum window,” and when the Celtics didn’t win it all last year, losing to Miami in the Eastern Conference finals, there was griping, lots of it, that it might never happen with these guys. Break up the Celtics!
THE BOSTON CELTICS ARE NBA CHAMPIONS 🏆🍀 pic.twitter.com/10iSWsN91P
— The Players' Tribune (@PlayersTribune) June 18, 2024
But the 2023-24 Celtics were more than those guys, even if those guys were the stars. It was the arrival of Porziņģis, even though the 7-2 Latvian missed much of the playoffs because of leg injuries. It was the backcourt play of Derrick White and another new Celtic, Jrue Holiday.
Yes, the Celtics seemed poised to register a four-game NBA Finals sweep of the Mavericks until being blown out in Game 4 in Dallas. Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla kept saying, in so many words, “Don’t worry.” The result was an epic Garden party Monday night. It was in this building exactly 16 years ago that the Celtics blew out the Lakers 131-92 in Game 6 of the NBA Finals for their 17th championship, but this victory over the Mavericks wasn’t like that one. Against the Lakers in ’08, it was over, really, really over, at halftime, the Celtics ahead 58-35. Back then when teams didn’t launch 3s at the rate they do today, that lead felt insurmountable. And it was.
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On the strength of Payton Pritchard’s 49-foot halftime heave, this time it was 67-46 at the break. But teams these days can erase that in a hurry. Even Auerbach may have hesitated to light up a victory cigar on the strength of a 21-point halftime lead.
And yet there were signs early on where this night, and this series, was headed. Porziņģis began the game on the bench but checked in with 6:49 remaining in the first quarter, a substitution that rocked the Garden. Porziņģis’s latest injury — a connective tissue tear and ligament displacement near his left ankle — kept him out of Games 3 and 4. For him to enter the game midway through the first quarter meant his presence was more than symbolic.
He did miss his first shot, a 3-point attempt with 4:34 remaining, but that’s not the first-quarter takeaway Celtics fans will remember. What they will remember is the 12-3 run, including a steal by Tatum and his running layup with 38 seconds remaining.
It was only Tatum’s second basket of the quarter. But he had four assists.
By halftime, Tatum had 16 points and Brown had 15 points. It was thus possible to sit back and look where it was going and see it as the night these two talented players finally led the Celtics to a championship.
Tatum finished with 31 points. Brown had 21 points.
Brown was MVP of the series.
Anyone think Tatum cares about that?
And while this is no dynasty — not yet, anyway — every living Celtic has to be admiring the way this team conducted its affairs, especially in the NBA Finals.
It was Mavericks coach Jason Kidd, remember, who sought to get inside the Celtics’ heads with his comment that Brown is Boston’s best player, a comment he liked so much he said it twice.
It was good stuff in that it added a little drama to the series. As in soap opera drama. There’s always been this Tatum-Brown/Brown-Tatum thing going on if you squint your eyes and look hard enough. But while there’s probably a competition between the two — that’s supposed to happen with great players, right? — it never turned the product sour.
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Tatum’s response to the snub, if that’s what it was, which it was, was to become an assist machine, thus thinking big picture and, thus, big banners.
Cousy, the Celtics great who turns 96 in August, was watching the game from his home in Worcester, some 48 miles west of Boston.
The Cooz was the Houdini of Hardwood. He led the NBA in assists eight times.
You think the Cooz got a kick out of the way Tatum performed in these NBA Finals?
You think the Cooz got a kick out of this Celtics team?
Dynasty? That’s a story to be written. But one of the greatest Celtics teams ever? That’s right now.
Get a copy of “Garden Party: Inside the Boston Celtics’ Run to the 2023-24 NBA Championship” The Athletic’s commemorative book about the Celtics’ 2023-24 season. Order a copy today for $39.95, plus shipping and tax. Books will ship August 2, 2024.
(Photo: Nathaniel S. Butler / NBAE via Getty Images)