The Boston Celtics Win Their 18th NBA Championship
Boston - In NBA history, teams that have lost by 30+ in the NBA Finals have gone 4-0 straight up as well as 4-0 against the spread. Once again, the Celtics follow suit and become NBA Champions for the 18th time in series history. It was exactly 16 years ago, on this date, that the Celtics won their last championship. It was only right that they would win their next on the exact same date. Jaylen Brown won the Eastern Conference Final MVP and would go on to win the NBA Finals MVP, even though Jayson Tatum should have been given the award.
TD Garden was full of loud and screaming fans. Little did they know that they would be in the presence of history. With Luka Doncic picking up an early foul, the Mavericks got off to a rocky start. Meanwhile, Jrue Holiday would go on to score the opening four points, all assisted by Tatum. After giving up 122 points in Game Four, the Celtics came out playing ferocious team defense. This led to a 9-2 run and forced Jason Kidd to use his first timeout of the game. With the aura and vibe coming from TD Garden, you just knew that this was the Celtics game to lose. Just when you thought the crowd couldn’t get any louder, Kristaps Porzingis entered the game and the crowd went berserk. Joe Mazzulla said, in pregame, that Porzingis would not be under a minute restriction even though he is dealing with an injury.
The one bright spot for the Mavericks in the early going came from an unlikely source. Josh Green subbed into the game, played hard nose defense, and sank two three-pointers. With Porzingis still dealing with that injury, the Mavericks came out hunting him in the pick and rolled and it was working. On five consecutive possessions, he was targeted. All that being said, neither team was scoring consistently. That was until the Celtics went on a 9-0 run to end the quarter. Jayson Tatum was on his way to a triple-double with four points, three rebounds, and four assists in the opening 12 minutes. They had all the momentum heading to the second quarter as they led 28-18.
P.J. Washington was lucky to not receive a flagrant foul for pulling Porzingis to the ground as he was trying to post up. It was not a basketball play and should count his lucky stars he wasn’t assessed anything more than a personal. As Dallas tried to march back, the Celtics had an answer for every counter thrown. Whether it was Holiday sinking threes, Tatum finding his way to the lane, or a Porzingis mid-range jumper, there was always a response. To hone in on Tatum, in his first 17 minutes on the floor, he led the Celtics in with 11 points, and seven assists, and was tied in rebounds with four. To make matters worse for the Mavs, Luka missed a pair of free throws. With the crowd as amped up as they were, you couldn’t help to think that they were playing a part in those misses.
Dallas wasn’t completely out of it though. With just under five minutes left to go before halftime, they had gotten within double digits. Derrick Jones Jr. might have played his best basketball of this series in Game Five. He was the leading scorer for the Mavericks and was a huge factor in keeping things within distance. The leading theme of the Celtics season has been sacrifice. As this team is loaded with talent, nobody is selfish, and everyone just wants to win. The countless hustle plays and Al Horford showing off his old-man strength showed that the Celtics just wanted to win more. In one of those countless hustle plays, Derrick White face-planted into the floor while diving for a loose ball. He came up bleeding from his mouth and immediately checked to see if his teeth were all in place. There was no way he was leaving the game and immediately hit a corner three on the ensuing possession. As Payton Pritchard does on the regular, he sank a 49-foot half-court shot as time expired to extend the lead to 67-46. It was the longest-made shot in the NBA Finals in the last 25 years and became the first player ever to have two 30-foot buzzer-beaters in NBA Finals history since 1997.
Doncic and Kyrie Irving were nowhere to be found in the first half. Neither one scored in double figures and only combined for 14 points. On the other hand, Tatum and Brown both scored in double digits and combined to score 31 points. Tatum, easily the best player of the first half, was one assist away from a double-double in the opening 24 minutes. He also passed the great Kobe Bryant for most career playoff points at age 27 or younger. Their 21-point lead consisted of elite defense, great rebounding, not turning the ball over, and sinking the three-ball. It was a fantastic first half of basketball for Celtics faithful and an awful opening half if you follow the Mavericks.
It was a Boston three-party in TD Garden. It was only a matter of time until the barrage of threes was finally going to go down. This has been the ride-or-die method of offense all year long and they were raining into the hoop. As Mike Breen ecstatically said, “The Boston barrage continues”. It only took two minutes and 50 seconds before Jason Kidd called another timeout. Coming back from the timeout, the Mavericks went on a 7-0 run and Josh Green kept up his hot shooting from the first half. Luka started to aggressively attack the basket and he found his rhythm while his counterpart, Kyrie still remained cold from the field. In the third quarter, Luka passed Dirk Nowitzki for the most points by a Mavs player in a single postseason run. Possession by possession, the Mavericks kept inching closer as the quarter was coming to an end. With twelve minutes remaining, the Celtics were only one quarter away from becoming NBA Champions.
Jrue Holiday’s selflessness does not go unnoticed. He recorded another double-double with 11 rebounds, four offensive, and 15 points. For the third time in the game, Jason Kidd called a timeout within the opening three minutes of a quarter. His team came out slow in just about every quarter and that’s not how you beat this Celtics squad. As soon as Doncic hit his first three-pointer of the night, Tatum responded with a three-point play of his own. That’s been the script for just about the entire game. As soon as the Mavericks try to build some momentum, it gets shut down. The smothering defense from the opening tip set the tone for the game.
The perfect cap to a perfect season, Joe Mazzulla challenged an out-of-bounds call, up 21 points, with two minutes to play. With 2:02 left in the game, Al Horford got his curtain call. After 17 years of playing in the NBA, Horford became an NBA Champion for the very first time. It took 185 playoff games, the most all-time, for him to win a championship. At the next dead ball, Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum got a combined curtain call and the fans went ballistic cheering for their guys. You can see the pure joy on their faces as they left the floor and Tatum started crying as soon as he got onto the bench. As soon as Little Deuce came up to hug Big Deuce, it was over. The Boston Celtics won their 18th title in franchise history.
