How the Celtics solved all their problems and turned into a championship-winning, new-look NBA superteam

Halfway through Game 3 of the NBA Finals, the Boston Celtics had problems. Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving, the Dallas Mavericks’ stars, had shaken loose for a combined 37 points. Daniel Gafford and Dereck Lively II, the Mavericks’ rim protectors, were rim-protecting. Kristaps Porzingis’ torn medial retinaculum, an extremely unusual lower-leg injury, loomed large: The 7-footer was sidelined, shrinking Boston’s margin for error.

The Celtics trailed by just one point and had a 2-0 lead in the series, but knew that starting the second half poorly could give Dallas life. Hours earlier, Joe Mazzulla, their jiu-jitsu- and MMA-loving coach, had told them that, the closer you think you are to winning the fight, the closer you are to “to getting your ass kicked.” He drove the point home with UFC clips, which, violent as they might have been, surely made for a more pleasant watch than revisiting Game 4 of the 2022 Finals, in which they were up by five at halftime against the Golden State Warriors with an opportunity to go up 3-1 before Stephen Curry caught fire and their offense fell flat. 

If that third quarter was a test of Boston’s championship mettle, the team nailed every part of it. Quick ball reversals, smart spacing and timely cuts defanged Dallas’ defense. The Celtics generated high-quality looks on their first nine offensive possessions and scored on eight of them. Desperate, the Mavericks went to a 2-3 zone. Then they tried small ball. Neither worked. Xavier Tillman, Boston’s third- or fourth-string center depending on the matchup, blocked Doncic on a switch and made a corner 3. Heading into the fourth, Boston led by 15.

Even without Porzingis, this was Boston at its best: playing with pace and purpose on one end, conceding nothing easy on the other. Now that the Celtics have clinched their record-setting 18th championship, that defining stretch — and their Game 5 victory on Monday, which followed a blowout loss in Game 4 and featured several similar surges —  can be seen as the culmination of years of trades, tweaks, trials and…

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Author : James Herbert

Publish date : 2024-06-18 11:18:52

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