Boston is the starting-finish power this season. A former Celtics coach is putting together the deepest, most modern and most dominant team in the NBA – and is not only laying the foundation for title number 18, but even a possible new dynasty.
The Boston Celtics have the NBA record again: It took 16 years, but the goblins from “Beantown” have won the 18th title in their illustrious history with their victory on the night of Monday to Tuesday. The 106:88 victory against the Dallas Mavericks in game five of these NBA Finals was the final act in a season for the history books, which ended with a clear 4:1 victory for the flagship franchise and an iconic “Duck Boat” championship parade on Friday. It was the 13th time this millennium that one of the local teams (Celtics, Patriots, Red Sox, Bruins) celebrated a title in the four major US sports.
How the decisive victory came about was telling. Jayson Tatum scored 31 points and 11 assists. Jaylen Brown was on hand with 21 points, 8 rebounds and 6 assists. Jrue Holiday and Derrick White contributed 29 points and 19 rebounds – in addition to their usual suffocating lockdown defense. Al Horford, who finally made a breakthrough after playing the second most playoff games (186) without a title, just missed a double-double. Kristaps Porzingis returned from injury and hit two shots from the field. Sam Hauser sank a couple of threes. And Payton Pritchard sprinkled in one of his patented “Hail Marys” from the halftime line with the halftime siren in a rabid “TD Garden”.
Head coach Joe Mazzulla, the youngest coach to lead a team to a championship since the NBA and ABA merged in 1976, couldn’t have dreamed of anything better. Since Bill Russell won his eleventh and final championship as a player-coach in 1969, no coach aged 35 or younger has won a title. Even without a veritable MVP candidate, Mazzulla, just one year after loud cries about his dismissal, set up the green and white team perfectly. It is also thanks to him and his innate drive to face all challenges and always give it his all that this team has finally been able to overcome the failures and disappointments of the recent past.
Historic start-finish superiority
Boston was the starting-finish power in this past 2023/24 NBA season. Green dominated proceedings in the offseason when team president Brad Stevens signed Jrue Holiday and Kristaps Porzingis – two former All-Stars. What followed was one of the most impressive runs of all time. No opponent was even remotely able to limit this team.
Boston played as dominant as Michael Jordan’s Bull in the 90s.
(Photo: imago/ZUMA Press)
The Celtics won 80 of 101 games (regular season plus playoffs) – only ten teams have ever done better. Their 16-3 record in the postseason was the best since 2017, when the Golden State Warriors made short work of LeBron James’ Cleveland Cavaliers in the finals. Since the introduction of the new playoff format 40 years ago, only eight other teams have lost three games or less on the way to the championship.
Boston’s net rating during the season (plus 11.6) has only been surpassed three times in NBA history: twice by Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls in the 1990s, and once by the same Warriors with Steph Curry and Kevin Durant. Boston’s offense was the most efficient of all time, and the point differential (regular season plus playoffs) was the fourth highest.
The “Jay Team”
“What are they going to say now?” a delighted Jayson Tatum shouted into the microphone – a dig at the critics and doubters of these Celtics, especially the “Jays”, their star duo. Jaylen Brown’s record-breaking new contract in the summer of 2023, just a short time after being eliminated by Miami in the Conference Finals, was grist to the mill of all the naysayers. Brown extended for five years and $304 million – the first deal that will exceed $60 million per season. Tatum will sign a similar, marginally higher deal this summer (five years, $315 million).
When Brown received the Finals MVP trophy from Commissioner Adam Silver, he immediately mentioned Tatum: “It was an ultimate team effort, and I share this award with my brothers and my partner in crime, Jayson Tatum. He was with me the whole time.” Not so long ago, both Brown and Tatum were considered shaky candidates in Boston. Endless questions about whether the two could work together and harmonize accompanied the constant failures deep into the playoffs. Since Brown’s rookie season in 2016-17, Boston has reached the Conference Finals six times and two NBA Finals before finally winning the championship this year. The 107 playoff games they played together before their first title is a new NBA record.
“We’ve grown together,” says Brown. “We’ve been playing together for seven years now and we’ve been through a lot. The losses, the expectations. The media often said, ‘We can’t play together, we’ll never win.’ But we ignored that and just kept going. He trusts me and I trust him. And together we did it.” Tatum and Brown trained together for the first time last summer to prepare for the season. “We were past the phase where we made All-Star Games and All-NBA teams,” Tatum recalls. “Not that that wasn’t worth anything, but we did it. And hopefully it stays that way. But it was high time to make the necessary sacrifices, points, shots, whatever, to create the best team in the league.”
The “Jays” threatened to crumble
Like many duos before them, the “Jays” were in danger of falling apart before they could finally reach the NBA summit. Karl Malone and John Stockton spent 18 years chasing the title in Utah in vain. Jerry West and Elgin Baylor reached the finals seven times in twelve years with the Los Angeles Lakers – and lost every time. Clyde Drexler and Terry Porter failed in the finals twice with Portland. Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook parted ways in Oklahoma City after nine years, while another promising young duo – Shaquille O’Neal and Penny Hardaway – parted ways after just three in Orlando. Neither pair made more than one finals appearance. The spectacular tandems Chris Paul and Blake Griffin (LA Clippers) and Gary Payton and Shawn Kemp (Seattle) cast a spell over each other for six and seven years respectively, without being able to buy anything in the end.
“We were always good and talented enough.”
(Photo: Michael Conroy/AP)
“We were always good and talented enough,” Tatum recalls. “We made it to the Conference Finals twice in our first three years together. But nobody seemed to realize how young we were. Everyone just said, ‘Oh, they lost, they can’t play together. They should trade Brown.’ Nobody wanted to give us time…”
The genius behind the success
Nobody except Brad Stevens. The 47-year-old coached the Celtics between 2013 and 2021 before taking over as president and general manager from Danny Ainge, who has since moved to Utah, for the 2021-22 season. Ainge is the original architect of this team, successfully initiating the rebuild after the 2008 championship when he traded superstars Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce to Brooklyn in 2013 – for a truckload of future draft picks that later became Brown and Tatum. Ainge hired Stevens as head coach from Butler University in 2013 despite his lack of NBA experience and drafted Brown (2016) and Tatum (2017) with the third pick in the draft in consecutive years.
Stevens’ always level-headed, consistent and, above all, modest manner gradually turned the Celtics into a top team that worked its way up, only to ultimately fail. Stars like Kyrie Irving, Gordon Hayward and Kemba Walker came as mentors for Tatum and Brown – and soon left again without bringing Boston the success they had hoped for. When Ainge left, the club threatened to sink into chaos. Stevens moved into the front office and kept the ship on course. Ime Udoka was hired and fired as coach, and Mazzulla rose from assistant to head coach. Instead of listening to the constant noise, losing patience and accepting one of the countless trade offers for Brown, Stevens relied even more on his young star duo, whom he had accompanied from day one in the NBA.
As a manager, he built an almost invincible team around his two new leaders. He brought back veteran Al Horford, the big man he had already coached in Boston between 2016 and 2019. A clever trade with San Antonio brought All-Defensive guard Derrick White to Beantown two years ago. Last summer, Stevens pulled off a daring feat: he traded two key players and two draft picks for combo guard and 2021 NBA champion Jrue Holiday. Then he traded starter and crowd favorite Marcus Smart for Kristaps Porzingis. The most devastating lineup in basketball was complete. Since then, the Celtics have been mowing through the league with a modern offense and suffocating defense.
Neue Celtics-Dynastie?
Boston’s title was the culmination of years of visionary work. From Ainge to Stevens. From Stevens to Mazzulla. Patience and continuity pay off. Given the enviable quality in all aspects of the franchise – generous team owners, opportunistic management, modern coaching, the best starting five in the NBA – it seems reasonable to plan for continued success.
Of course, there are no guarantees in this league, which is more balanced than ever. The competition never sleeps. From Denver to Dallas, Milwaukee to Philadelphia, to upstarts Minnesota, Oklahoma City and New York, or veteran teams like Phoenix, LA and Miami. At least ten teams will have a say in the championship race in the coming years. In the past six years, a new champion has always been crowned. There have been no back-to-back champions since the Warriors in 2017 and 2018. Since 2019, no champion has even made it back to the finals. The last three-peat was more than 20 years ago (Lakers 2000, 2001 and 2002).
The era of dynasties seems to be over for now. However, Stevens and Co. have done a great job in Boston and could reverse this trend. All key players are under long-term contracts. Tatum and White can and will be extended this summer; Horford has already announced that he will return for his 18th professional season; Brown, Holiday, Porzingis and Pritchard are bound until at least 2026. The fact that Mazzulla will not lose a single one of his key players is an absolute rarity for reigning champions. The Celtics will also be the clear favorites in 2024/25. Titles are simply the expectation in Boston, not least for Stevens: “Even if we are lucky enough to reach number 18 one day – from the day after we will be chasing number 19. That’s all that matters.”
2024-06-23 18:10:03
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