NBA Finals: Celtics win record 18th title with Game 5 rout of Mavericks
By KYLE HIGHTOWER AP Sports Writer
BOSTON — Jayson Tatum put his hands behind his head, with TD Garden fans standing on their feet cheering around him, and took it all in.
Walking to the bench, he wrapped both arms around Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla.
The journey was complete.
The Boston Celtics again stand alone among NBA champions.
Tatum had 31 points, 11 assists and eight rebounds, and the Celtics topped the Dallas Mavericks, 106-88, on Monday night to win the franchise’s 18th championship, breaking a tie with the rival Lakers for the most in league history.
Boston earned its latest title on the 16th anniversary of hoisting its last Larry O’Brien Trophy in 2008. It marks the 13th championship won this century by one of the city’s Big 4 professional sports franchises.
“It means the world,” Tatum said on stage after the team received the trophy from NBA commissioner Adam Silver. “It’s been a long time. And damn I’m grateful.”
Jaylen Brown added 21 points, eight rebounds and six assists, and was voted the NBA Finals MVP.
“I share this with my brothers and my partner in crime Jayson Tatum,” Brown said after the 107th career playoff game he and Tatum have played together – the most for any duo before winning a title.
Jrue Holiday, a former UCLA and Campbell Hall High standout, finished with 15 points and 11 rebounds. Center Kristaps Porzingis also provided an emotional lift, returning from a two-game absence because of a dislocated tendon in his left ankle to chip in five points in 17 minutes.
They helped the Celtics cap a postseason that saw them go 16-3 and finish with an 80-21 overall record. That .792 winning percentage ranks second in team history behind only the Celtics’ 1985-86 championship team that finished 82-18 (.820).
Mazzulla, in his second season, at age 35 also became the youngest coach since Bill Russell in 1969 to lead a team to a championship.
“You have very few chances in life to be great,” Mazzulla said.
Luka Doncic finished with 28 points and 12 rebounds for Dallas, which failed to extend the series after avoiding a sweep with a 38-point win in Game 4. The Mavericks had been 3-0 in Game 5s this postseason, with Doncic scoring at least 31 points in each of them. He said the chest, right knee and left ankle injuries he played through during the Finals weren’t an excuse for Dallas struggling throughout the series.
“It doesn’t matter if I was hurt, how much was I hurt. I was out there,” he said. “I tried to play, but I didn’t do enough.”
Kyrie Irving finished with just 15 points on 5-of-16 shooting and has lost 13 of the last 14 meetings against the Celtics team he left in the summer of 2019 to join the Brooklyn Nets.
Irving thinks better things are ahead for the Mavs.
“I see an opportunity for us to really build our future in a positive manner, where this is almost like a regular thing for us and we’re competing for championships,” he said.
NBA teams are now 0-157 in postseason series after falling into a 3-0 deficit.
Mavs coach Jason Kidd believes Doncic and his team will grow from this NBA Finals experience.
“I think the first step is just to be in it. I think that’s a big thing,” he said. “Yes, we lost 4-1, but I thought the group fought against the Celtics and just, unfortunately, we just couldn’t make shots when we had to, or we turned the ball over and they took full advantage of that.”
Boston never trailed and led by as many as 26, feeding off the energy of the Garden crowd.
Dallas was within 16-15 early before the Celtics closed the first quarter on a 12-3 run that included eight combined points by Tatum and Brown.
The Celtics did it again in the second quarter when the Mavericks trimmed what had been a 15-point deficit to nine. Boston ended the period with a 19-7 spurt that was capped by a a half-court buzzer beater by Payton Pritchard – his second such shot of the series – to give Boston a 67-46 halftime lead.
Over the last two minutes of the first and second quarters, the Celtics outscored the Mavericks 22-4.
The Celtics never looked back.
Russell’s widow, Jeannine Russell, and his daughter Karen Russell were in TD Garden to salute the newest generation of Celtics champions.
They watched current Celtics stars Tatum and Brown earn their first rings. It was the trade that sent 2008 champions Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce to Brooklyn in 2013 that netted Boston the draft picks it eventually used to select Brown and Tatum third overall in back-to-back drafts in 2016 and 2017.
The All-Stars came into their own this season, leading a Celtics team that was built around taking and making a high number of 3-pointers, and a defense that rated as the league’s best during the regular season.
The duo made it to at least the Eastern Conference finals as teammates four previous times.
They finally reached the finish line in their fifth deep playoff run together.
After both struggling at times offensively in the series, Tatum and Brown hit a groove in Game 5, combining for 31 points and 11 assists in the first half.
It helped bring out all the attributes that made Boston the NBA’s most formidable team this postseason – spreading teams out, sharing the ball, and causing havoc on defense. And even chipping a tooth, like Derrick White did after he was landed on by Dereck Lively II.
“I’ll lose all my teeth for a championship,” White said.
And it put a championship bow on a dizzying stretch for the Celtics, that saw them lose in the Finals to the Golden State Warriors in 2022 and then fail to return last season after a Game 7 home loss to the Miami Heat in the conference finals.
Tatum vowed that night to erase the sting of those disappointments.
Standing in a sea of confetti Monday night he was reminded by his 6-year-old son, Deuce, of what he’d accomplished.
“He told me that I was the best in the world,” Tatum said. “I said, ‘You’re damn right I am.’”
DONCIC, IRVING CAN’T DELIVER
Short jumpers rolled off the rim and 3-pointers went in and out. Even free throws were a challenge for Doncic in the clinching game of the series.
Dallas needed Doncic and Irving to be at their best in Game 5. Instead, the Mavericks’ best players got off to a terrible start, and by the time their shots started falling the Celtics were coasting to a an 18-point victory and the title.
“Failing at this stage definitely sucks,” Irving said while the Celtics celebrated in the locker room down the hall. “It’s a bitter feeling because you want to keep playing, and you feel like your best game is coming up next and the shots that you shoot next game are coming up.
“We got to the top of the mountain and we failed. So now we have to start at the bottom, and that should be inspiring,” he said. “It will be a long summer, but looking forward to the start of next season now.”
Doncic missed his first six 3-point attempts and finished 12 of 25 from the floor; by the time he made a 3-point shot, Dallas already trailed by 21. He 10 of his 28 points in the fourth quarter, when Dallas never got closer than 18 points.
He had 12 rebounds but also turned the ball over seven times. He was 2 for 5 from the free throw line, a problem that has bothered him throughout the series.
“It just wasn’t our night offensively,” Kidd said after his fifth-seeded team fell short of its second NBA title. “We’re a young team. We have a young core, and so this is an exciting time to be a Mavs fan and to also be a coach for the Mavs.”
Irving was 3 for 9 from 3-point range and had nine assists but scored six of his 15 points in the fourth quarter, when the outcome was obvious.
“I look at it as an opportunity for us to observe what we did well this year as a group and how me and Luka can be better as the leaders of the team,” he said. “When you fail at the Finals, it’s not something that you want to carry the disappointment forever or on to next season. We worked extremely hard to be one of the final two teams. We didn’t achieve our goal, but we achieved most of our goal. So, this is just the last step that we have to get back to, and we know it’s not going to be easy.”
Irving and Doncic shared a hug at the end of the game.
“We said, ‘We’ll fight together next season,’ and we (are) just going to believe,” Doncic said.
LUKA LEAVES HIS MARK
Doncic’s first trip to the NBA Finals didn’t result in his first championship. That said, the Dallas star most definitely left his mark on these playoffs.
Doncic finished the postseason as the NBA’s leader in points (635), rebounds (208) and assists (178).
He’s only the second player in NBA history to finish the postseason as the leader in all three of those categories. It also happened last year – when Denver’s Nikola Jokic pulled off the feat.
“I’m proud of every guy that stepped on the floor, all the coaches, all the people behind (the scenes),” Doncic said. “Obviously, we didn’t win the Finals, but we did have a hell of a season and I’m proud of every one of them.”
Doncic also joined another very small club, that being players to score 3,000 points in a single season. His 28 points on Monday in the season finale gave him 3,005 this season, including the playoffs.
He became the 11th player to do that. Michael Jordan had 10 such seasons, Wilt Chamberlain had five and nine other players – Bob McAdoo, Elgin Baylor, James Harden, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Kevin Durant, Kobe Bryant, Rick Barry, Shaquille O’Neal and now Doncic – have each done it once.
HOLIDAY HISTORY
Boston’s Jrue Holiday won an NBA title in 2021, then won an Olympic gold medal later that summer. He’s got a chance to do it again.
Holiday and Boston teammate Jayson Tatum will be part of USA Basketball’s squad at the Paris Games, with training camp starting early next month in Las Vegas.
Holiday could be the third player to win an NBA or WNBA title, and then an Olympic or FIBA World Cup gold medal, in the same calendar year on more than one occasion. Sue Bird did it three times and Scottie Pippen did it twice.
CELTICS RECORD
Boston’s 16-3 record in these playoffs represents the 10th-best postseason mark by a team in NBA history.
The top of that list: Golden State was 16-1 in 2017, the Lakers were 15-1 in 2001 and Philadelphia was 12-1 in 1983.
Also ahead of Boston’s run this season: the 1999 San Antonio Spurs, 1991 Chicago Bulls and 1989 Detroit Pistons (all 15-2), the 1971 Milwaukee Bucks and 1982 Lakers (both 12-2) and the 1950 Lakers, then in Minneapolis (11-2).
The previous best playoff record in Celtics history was 15-3, done in the 1986 postseason.
BACK ON TOP
Move over, Lakers. Boston is back atop the NBA’s all-time list for most titles won.
The Lakers’ latest championship – won in the COVID-19 bubble in 2020 – pulled the franchise into a tie with the Celtics for the most in NBA history, 17 apiece.
The Celtics beat the Lakers in the 1963 NBA Finals, giving Boston its sixth title to the Lakers’ five. And for the next 57 years, the Celtics remained alone atop the list of most championships.
When the 1986 season ended, Boston had 16 titles to L.A.’s nine. The championship count since is Lakers 8, Celtics 2 – good enough to give the Celtics sole possession of the No. 1 spot again.
STILL WAITING
After 186 playoff games in his career, Al Horford is finally a champion – and finally off a list that he probably didn’t aspire to be part of.
No active player had appeared in more playoff games without a championship than Horford, the Celtics’ center.
Now that he’s off the list, the new leaders in playoff games played without winning their first title yet are futher Hall of Famers James Harden (166), Chris Paul (149) and Russell Westbrook (122).
NICE CHECK
The Celtics’ players (and probably some staff) are going to get a nice check for winning the title.
Boston’s share of the NBA’s playoff pool is $12,059,435. That’s the most a team has ever won from the postseason pile of bonus money, which was a record $33,657,947 this season.
Some of that gets distributed to each of the 16 playoff teams. Dallas’ share was $5,899,422.
The bonus pool is typically split in some way among players and staff from the playoff teams.
AP basketball writer Tim Reynolds contributed to this story.
"It took being relentless… I dreamed about what it would be like, but this is 10 times better."
Jayson Tatum on what it took to win the title after coming up short in 2022
pic.twitter.com/ZrbZrCeadK
— NBA (@NBA) June 18, 2024
HUGE GAME 5 FOR JAYSON TATUM.
HE'S NOW AN NBA CHAMPION.31p | 11a | 8r | 2s |
— NBA (@NBA) June 18, 2024
"I can't even put it into words; Bill Russell and what he's meant to me throughout my Boston journey… It's unreal."
An emotional Jaylen Brown on Bill Russell and how special it is to win the Finals MVP award named after him
pic.twitter.com/YppKp2a9ux
— NBA (@NBA) June 18, 2024
The #NBAFinals MVP put on the finishing touches in Game 5!
21 PTS
8 REB
6 AST
2 STL
1 Larry O'Brien Trophy
1 Bill Russell Trophy @FCHWPO, NBA Champion— NBA (@NBA) June 18, 2024
How often does your backcourt give you 19 boards and 2 blocks in an #NBAFinals closeout game?
These Celtics guards are something special.@Jrue_Holiday11: 15 PTS, 11 REB, 4 AST, 1 BLK@Dwhite921: 14 PTS, 8 REB, 4 3PM, 2 STL, 1 BLK pic.twitter.com/Vg5sXFCvKc
— NBA (@NBA) June 18, 2024
Yea, Daddy!!
— NBA (@NBA) June 18, 2024
The @celtics capture their 18th Championship, most of any franchise in NBA history!
pic.twitter.com/87hgQyQ3uM
— NBA (@NBA) June 18, 2024