Can the Celtics repeat as champs in today’s NBA? Why Boston will remain in the title picture

As happy as he was to be hoisting the Larry O’Brien Championship Trophy again, Jrue Holiday sounded nearly as excited to have a front-row seat to watch Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown get their hands on NBA championship gold for the first time — to see the Boston Celtics’ two young superstar wings reach this watershed moment, as they have so many others over the past seven seasons, together, and with joy.

“It’s been great to experience on this side, and to be on this side and get this win,” Holiday said on Monday night, after the Celtics put the finishing touches on a 106-88 win in Game 5 of the 2024 NBA Finals, eliminating the Dallas Mavericks to reach the top of the mountain. “Hopefully, it’s a burden off of their shoulders.”

There’s something a vet like Holiday understands about this, though, that his younger, gleeful colleagues might not yet have internalized. See, the relief of sloughing off the yoke of Can’t Win the Big One — the pleasure that comes with putting down that weight and picking up a great big golden trophy — can be fleeting. Because, after all, what is happiness? It’s a moment before you need more happiness.

“Another burden,” Holiday said, “is doing it again.”

That’s a trick that’s become harder and harder to pull off in the modern NBA, where the pace of player movement and roster reconstruction has continued to accelerate at such a blinding clip that virtually every crowbarred-open path to contention seems to begin closing in two years, max.

The last six seasons have each ended with a different team lording over the league; we haven’t seen a repeat champion since Kevin Durant was a Warrior. In a 30-team sport featuring arguably the deepest talent pool and the widest distribution of said talent in league history, you’d probably be better off taking the field over the incumbent when projecting out to this time next year.

And yet — and this may be recency bias and a near-total lack of sleep talking — it’s not hard to see a pretty compelling case for why Boston could find itself right back in this position next June … and, maybe, for a few more springs…

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Author : Yahoo Sports

Publish date : 2024-06-18 18:02:30

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