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BOSTON — The duality of the moment Monday night couldn’t be lost on anyone, not a soul in the shaken and stirred TD Garden.
The warmth for Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown. The heat for Kyrie Irving — just as hot and powerful, but it felt different.
One wouldn’t get in the way of the other, just as Tatum and Brown refused to be divided. And they refused to lose the stranglehold they had on this NBA Finals, clearly displaying they have the superior team and clearly graduating to the land of the elite.
The Boston Celtics flipped their tassels to the other side in a haze of green glory, dismantling the overmatched Dallas Mavericks in Game 5 of the NBA Finals with a dominant 106-88 closing win.
The championship is banner No. 18 that will hang in the rafters, breaking a tie with the Los Angeles Lakers. The game was a mere coronation, but one that was earned in this building, on this night.
The smell of cheap Champagne and cigars was unavoidable Monday night, but it was probably nauseating two years ago when Stephen Curry painted his masterpiece using the Celtics as a blank canvas, finishing them off in a Game 6 at the Garden.
Last year was the embarrassing Game 7 loss to the eighth-seeded Miami Heat in the Eastern Conference finals after Boston battled back from a 3-0 deficit and threatened to make real history by being the first to achieve such a comeback in the NBA.
Jayson Tatum high-fives Jaylen Brown after a play against the Dallas Mavericks during the second quarter of Game 5 of the NBA Finals at TD Garden on June 17, 2024 in Boston. (Photo by Elsa/Getty Images)
It was almost poetic the Celtics exorcised those demons in their building — the demanding and unrelenting fans whose belief in this team was matched only by the suffocating expectations, and they thought their two best players couldn’t do it as headliners, let alone together.
But there was Tatum, facilitating, rebounding and making up for a subpar shooting series, finally breaking loose to score 31 with 11 assists and eight rebounds. Brown, who won Finals MVP by a 7-4 margin over Tatum, scored 21 points with six assists and eight rebounds. He hounded…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/2024-nba-finals-jayson-tatum-jaylen-brown-finally-deliver-the-dream-for-celtics-065646080.html
Author : Yahoo Sports
Publish date : 2024-06-18 06:56:46
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