The Boston Celtics are NBA champions for the 18th time. Let’s run through 18 thoughts about the team, the season, and the future.
The banner flies just as high
This was in incredible basketball team, especially whenever Kristaps Porzingis was healthy. Top 5 on both ends of the floor, the most efficient offense of all time (and 10th-best when adjusted for era), the fifth-best point differential in history, two All-NBA guys, two All-Defense guys, two more top-50 or so players in the league, all capped by a 16-3 run through the postseason.
Throughout the season and playoffs, and even already in the aftermath of their win, a lot of people have been reluctant to admit that. Adamant, even, that this team is just not that good. I understand why, to some degree. There were plenty of times where this team left many people (myself included) cold for one reason or another. The evidence in their season-long performance and record and offensive-defensive-net ratings and what it was like to watch them when fully operational disagrees pretty strongly.
But even if the evidence didn’t weigh so overwhelmingly in favor of this team being truly great, guess what? It doesn’t fucking matter. It really just does not matter if you think they’re not that dominant or if you think it’s a mickey mouse title run or if you think some other historical team would beat them in a series. Their banner will fly just as high, their rings will shine just as bright, and their title will be written in the record books the exact same way as all titles past. That’s the part that matters.
And I know it’s the Celtics, so a lot of people are just sort of predisposed to hating on this. I’m a Knick fan, so I know that better than almost anyone. But this is a story that basketball fans should love.
It’s what people say they want from star players like Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown — sticking it out together and just continually trying to climb the mountain, then eventually, finally doing it. The Celtics never broke them up, as so many people insisted needed to be done for so many years. It took seven seasons, five conference title game appearances, a Finals loss, a Game 7 heartbreaker last season, and two core-shaking trades (more on that in a second) before they at last did what they set out to accomplish from the beginning.
If you can’t celebrate that, I’m just not sure what else to say.
The virtues of the short view
When the Celtics traded for Jrue Holiday, I wrote about something that has been in my head for a while: How to strike the correct balance between opening a title window as wide as possible, and keeping it open for as long as possible.
But after watching the Bucks add Lillard, the Celtics needed to level up to maintain their status among the East’s elite. To do that, sometimes you have to be willing to take risks. They took one here, just like they took one in dealing for Porzingis. The bet is that the team’s ceiling with a floor-spacing, rim-protecting big man is higher than it was over the past several years. As long as Tatum and Brown are healthy, the team’s potential downside is limited anyway. So, why not shoot for the moon? Especially when you’ve been so close for so many years, only to ultimately come up short.
Boston has recently been in the envious position of having a title window that looked like it was open both extremely wide and for a long time. It can be tempting to keep making moves that extend your window as long as possible, the theory being that the more chances you have to win, the better your odds of eventually coming away with one or more trophies. But repeatedly bumping up against the same ceiling can get frustrating, and make you want to open your window wider than it was before, just to raise the chances of actually, well, getting one. That seems to be the thinking here, even if it meant having to sacrifice some part of the chance to win one somewhere down the line.
The Celtics for a long time chose the latter path, but changed course with the deals for Holiday and Porzingis. And they finally got over the top, after getting so close for so many years in a row.
Sacrifice
Similarly, I wrote this about Jayson Tatum when releasing my officially unofficial MVP ballot: “Tatum, to me, affirmatively scaled back his individual contributions this year relative to the last two in order to achieve greater team success. It worked, and the Celtics are better for it.” I think that sentiment applies to the entire team — and especially the vaunted top six players: Tatum, Porzingis, Holiday, Jaylen Brown, Derrick White, and Al Horford.
For the first time in his career, Tatum's scoring average went down from one season to the next. So did his shot attempts per game and usage rate. Brown posted his lowest usage rate and scoring averages in four years. Holiday took more than 5 fewer shots per game, saw his usage drop to a career-low, and had the ball in his hands less often than ever before. Porzingis had his lowest usage rate since Year 2 with the Knicks. Horford willingly came off the bench for the lion's share of the season. Porzingis did so in the Finals. The only one of them who took on more responsibility than last season was White, which was enabled for the sacrifice of the others — on both ends of the floor.
They all benefitted, and the team benefitted even more.
Growth through failure
As J.J. Redick said during the postgame celebrations, this title for the Celtics — and Tatum and Brown in particular — took their being allowed to experience growth through failure. That’s something that a lot of teams and players aren’t afforded these days.
Two years ago, Tatum was not the playmaker that he was in this series, and this season. If he had poor shooting nights during that run to the 2022 Finals, he could not have had nearly the impact on the games that he did when that happened during this run. Tatum's career high in assists is 12. He nearly hit that number twice in this series, only falling short because last night was a blowout and so he chcked out of the game with 11. He made high-level reads all series long, and (with the exception of some ever-frustrating sidestep threes) trusted his teammates at all the right times. From the second quarter through the end of the game last night, he struck perhaps the best shoot-pass-drive decision-making balance that I've ever seen from him. It's a testament to his growth.
Brown has just flat-out gotten better every year of his career. He was Boston’s best player during this series, and during this run. He kept up his spectacular offensive performances despite being tasked with guarding Luka Doncic all series long. He was a menace in the open court, his drives set the tone for what Boston’s offense needed to be, and he rarely forced things more than they needed to be forced. He got the largest contract in NBA history last offseason, which caused a whole lot of consternation despite the fact that it only happened that way because he just so happened to be the first guy eligible to sign such a deal who was even conceivably worth it. That deal will be surpassed soon enough and look like a bargain soon after. That he won Finals MVP was fitting, given that it was almost always him that outsiders wanted to see shipped out of the Celtics did break up the Jays. Good for him.
Mazzulla’s masterclass
Joe Mazzulla was not necessarily put in the best position to succeed. He was Ime Udoka’s fourth assistant, sitting behind the bench in 2022. And he was suddenly thrust into the top job without much notice before last season.
All he’s done since then is guide the Celtics to back-to-back seasons with 57 or more wins, top three units on both sides of the floor, and the league's best net rating, with a conference finals appearance and now a title. So, he's 35 years old. So, he's more than a little awkward. So, he watches The Town 18 times a week. So what?
He was fantastic all season, and especially so in the Finals. How many other teams would have been bold enough to even try, let alone execute, Boston’s defensive strategy in this series? Mazzulla knew his personnel and his opponent well enough to lean into what his team does best and what would most frustrate the other team. Even if it led to uncomfortable situations like “Luka Doncic isolated at the top of the key against Sam Hauser” more often than anyone would reasonably desire.
He had the whole team on point, the whole time. During those aggravating moments when the offense would bog down, he implored them to do what everyone always wants them to do: Drive to the paint and get the cascading ball movement going. He incorporated two former All-Stars in much smaller roles than they’re used to, and got a probable future Hall-of-Famer to come off the bench and take the smallest role of his career. He got the buy-in, and and it paid off.
Stevens season
Brad Stevens was the coach of this team not all that long ago, remember. Apparently he felt burned out on the coaching grind; and honestly, the Celtics should consider themselves lucky that he did — because he appears to be a better executive than he was a coach.
This was Boston’s playoff roster in his final season on the bench. (Brown missed the playoffs due to an injury.)
Of that group, only Tatum, Brown, Payton Pritchard, and Luke Kornet remain three years later.
Fournier, Thompson, Parker, Ojeleye, Waters, and Fall were allowed to leave. Walker was traded — along with a draft pick — for Horford, who was coming off two seasons that would not suggest he was a player for whom one should trade a draft pick. Langford was sent to San Antonio in the trade for Derrick White. Nesmith was sent to Indiana in a trade for Malcolm Brogdon, who was then packaged with Robert Williams in the deal for Holiday. And Smart, widely considered the “heart and soul of the team,” was shipped out in the swap that netted Porzingis, along with (somehow) two first-round picks.
Being unafraid to aggressively deal from the team’s coffers of recent draft picks, as well as from the core of the squad that had led them to such success, in order to find the exact right mix around Tatum and Brown, is not necessarily something a lot of teams are willing to try. (Notably, it is something last season’s champions, the Denver Nuggets, did in their trades for both Aaron Gordon and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope.)
Al Horford, NBA Champion
Fuck yeah. Even if it makes me feel badly about being the same age and having to make sure my body still works correctly every morning while he’s out here blowing past 20-year-olds off the dribble and hounding the offensive glass.