a a blizzard of confetti across the parquet floor at TD Garden; the words “Jaylen Brown finals MVP” are no longer a punch line used to taunt the Massachusetts basketball faithful, but a solid, unquestionable reality; the Larry O’Brien Trophy held by Celtics owner Wyc Grousbeck; and Boston cemented the most successful franchise in NBA history with their 18th championship.
However, were these the worst NBA Finals – for the neutrals at least – in recent memory? A 4-1 scoreline certainly suggests that, and the way the Mavericks capitulated Monday night — bravely keeping pace for the first ten minutes of the first quarter before Boston all but secured the title by halftime — applied some weak punctuation. Highlight what had been an electrifying Dallas effort in Game 4. Ultimately, Kyrie Irving was a no-show on the court that once sang his name, the Mavericks’ supporting cast reverted to mediocre type, and the velvet hands and magical buttocks (and unreliable knee and injured chest) of Luka Dončić simply had nothing left to offer against a Boston outfit that was too flexible, too strong and too powerful on both sides of the pitch. With this 18th title, after 16 years without Larry O’Brien, the Celtics now move ahead of their historic rivals, the Lakers, for the all-time NBA Championship.
This was a victory for the process, the systems, the patient’s reconstruction, the steady climb – the ultimate victory of the collective over the individual, cooperation over the search for glory, technocracy over virtuosity. As they took the celebratory stage for the post-game open mic session, virtually every Celtics player emphasized the importance of teamwork, and it felt like more than just a platitude. Brown said his MVP award also belonged to his partner-in-crime Jayson Tatum, and Tatum explained why he and Brown, both of similar size, position and style on the court, could complement each other so much. effective despite all those years of critics calling for one of their own to be thrown off so Boston could claim a first title since 2008: “We knew we needed each other, we all need each other.” Meanwhile, Derrick White, who played the decider with one cracked tooth and another that looked ready for an encounter with a pair of pincers, had the best line of the trophy presentation: “I’d lose all my teeth for a championship.”
Sacrifice, mental discipline, the subordination of the ego to the common good: the Celtics are above all a group of nice young men, and their passage into history was built on the lived virtues of friendship, piety and self-control, which represent a victory for good manners above conceit. Even the final margin in this series bore the impression of the team’s essential courtesy; a real sweep would have been brutal, but a gentleman’s sweep gently lays down palpably inferior opposition. This is a team that has more than earned the right to party, and now it will – in responsible quantities. (Not White, he’s all set for a visit to the dentist.)
Boston’s 18th title has also been, famously, a long time coming – the culmination of a rebuild that began in earnest with the 2013 departures of Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce, heroes of the 2008 championship, and the replacement of former coach Doc Rivers by Brad Stevens. From there, through missteps (the 2017-2019 Kyrie interregnum), near misses (the 2022 Finals loss to Golden State, the seven-game loss to Miami in last year’s Eastern Conference playoffs) and romances that weren’t quite right. all the way (Marcus Smart, Gordon Hayward) the Celtics kept coming, kept building, kept believing the precious 18th ring would be theirs.
Along the way, the key pieces have slowly fallen into place: Brown and Tatum, the jewels in the Celtics’ crown, arrived as first-round draft picks in 2016 and 2017, respectively; vibrant center Al Horford also landed in Beantown in 2016; and last summer the final two pieces of the gaming puzzle were added: the ageless guard Jrue Holiday and the human language Kristaps Porzingis. Boston has benefited from good fortune along the way: its top draft picks in the years since they landed Brown and Tatum were Ben Simmons and Markelle Fultz, one of the NBA’s most infamous recent flops, while Stevens’ move to the general’s throne director and several other coaching departures created the confluence that made Joe Mazzulla head coach.
Mazzulla, who is only 35 years old, was fourth assistant coach when the Celtics went to the finals in 2022, and he was only appointed interim head coach at the start of the 2022-2023 season, but he has proven exactly the level The selfless, selfless disciplinarian who knows it took this mix of mid-twenties and veterans with one last shot at glory to reach the NBA’s ultimate peak. Mazzulla can seem like an odd character at times, and he spent much of the finals on the sidelines as an unimpressed dance instructor – hands on hips, lips pursed, gaze unblinking – but he has his found his voice at the right moments, and clearly his voice. mix of needles and reverence has resonated with the players.
And who would bet against them increasing the count? Tatum and Brown revealed their rich potential as a partnership on both ends of the court during the 2018 Eastern Conference Finals, when they had to carry the team in the absence of Irving and Hayward and take LeBron’s Cavaliers to seven games. It took six years for that potential to pay off, but now Tatum (age 26) and Brown (27) are champions on the right side of 30, and they got their first rings around the same time as LeBron (27) and Michael Jordan (28). ) claimed theirs.
“Transferring defense and playing without mistakes and rebounds: the basics, the details, the basics.” This was the message Mazzulla was caught on the on-field microphone giving to his players midway through the final decider, and the Celtics’ commitment to doing the simple things well was evident all over the floor on Monday. Defense, as it has been throughout the series, was the backbone of the Celtics’ effort, with a flurry of Mavericks turnovers early in the game providing the platform for a series of lightning strikes in transition.
Brown stuck to Dončić like honey, frustrated him, forced him into difficult catches, pushed him further and further from the basket and ultimately out of the final altogether. Tatum ran the show with cool authority, spreading the ball into space and then roaring forward to take shooting responsibility when necessary, a series of stepback threes, nerveless fadeaways, sharp turns and searing changes of pace making this by far his most complete final game is . There was a buzzer-beating three from half-court by Payton Pritchard, a few aerial balls from a clearly exhausted Luka, and in the final quarter, as the clock wound down to the inevitable, Mazzulla called Horford and Porzingis off the field so they could enjoy their own individual ovations. Here, the Celtics’ feel-good story was made clear, with Porzingis, the Knicks’ almost man for so many seasons, getting a ring and 38-year-old Horford, the NBA’s favorite dad, finally winning a championship at the end of his 186th postseason. game.
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And yet! Despite their dominance, despite their championship credentials, these Celtics still seem a bit bloodless. Technical, precise and brutally effective, their basketball nevertheless manages to raise the heart rate (at least in this neutral spectator). Boston lost just three games over the course of the playoffs and captured the championship without ever letting things drift even close to anything resembling a clutch. The Celtics planned and micromanaged their way to glory; this was basketball played far away from the rim, with an assured outcome, the threats expertly defused, the sweaty moments producing barely a drop of moisture across the collective forehead. Even Jayson Tatum’s “We did it!” tribute to Kevin Garnett’s “Everything is possible!” the 2008 celebration seemed a bit forced somehow; Tatum will likely win more titles than the single ring Garnett won over the course of his career, but it seems unlikely he’ll ever command the silver screen with the shrugging power Garnett displayed in the brothers’ classic Uncut Gems Safdie from 2019.
Where had the excitement gone during all of Boston’s laborious and busy work on defense and offense? Where was the sense of commitment so evident in the famous playoff moments of recent history – Giannis’ scare at the free throw line in 2021, the crazy clink-clink-drop of Kawhi Leonard’s corner three in Game 7 of the 2019 series against the 76ers , the desperate desperation of LeBron’s block in 2016? The only team in recent years that has been more dominant than these Celtics over the course of an entire playoff run is the Kevin Durant-boosted Golden State Warriors, who cruised to a championship in 2017 while conceding just one game.
This Boston crop, while not as brilliantly talented as Peak Steph’s Golden State, has much of the ruthlessness of their predecessors, their churning, machine-like air of inevitability. But the peaks of Curry, Durant and even LeBron are over; The old generation of the NBA is finally, seemingly, passing into history, its work done, the legends assure. The new generation is here, and it looks like Boston’s technocrats will master the performance model in the coming years.