NBA finals 2024 Game 5: Dallas Mavericks v Boston Celtics – live

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Does anyone else feel like we’re about to see history?

Coming back from an 0-3 series deficit doesn’t happen in the NBA. Literal.

But after Dallas beat Boston in Game 4, anxiety is sure to increase among America’s most superstitious fanbase.

Maybe it’s the circles I walk in, but the Celtics fans I know seem more demanding than cheering. And they’re demanding it from a team that was outmatched — and, perhaps more troublingly, outmatched — in Game 4. Joe Mazzulla simply had no answers for all the wrinkles Jason Kidd threw at him, and instead relied on his iron eight-man rotation to save the day, even though they were physically outmatched.

So are we going to see a self-fulfilling prophecy? If enough people say the Celtics will definitely blow it, will they?

Or does the series end tonight?

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Beau will be visiting soon. In the meantime, here’s Kyrie Irving on her return to the Garden:

“Now that I’m older, in retrospect, I definitely would have taken the time to get to know the people in the community and talk to some of the champions that came before me,” Irving told reporters on Sunday. “They have a championship status here… They expect you to seamlessly believe in the pride of the Celtics, in everything that is Celtic.

‘And if you don’t, you’ll be thrown out. I’m one of the people on the run. That’s fine with me, you know what I mean. I did it to myself.”

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