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2024 NBA Finals – Dallas Mavericks v Boston Celtics
BOSTON — Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum had paid their dues.
This Boston Celtics squad had been to the Eastern Conference Finals or NBA Finals in five of the previous seven years, they had been knocking on the door of a championship but just couldn’t take that final step.
Until this season.
“It took being relentless,” Tatum said of the lessons learned in all those losses. “It took being on the other side of this and losing in the Finals and being at literally the lowest point in a basketball career that you could be, to next year, to the following year, thinking that was going to be the time, and come up short again.
“So, I mean, people have said it before. But coming up short and having failures makes this moment that much better. Because you know what it feels like to lose. You know what it feels like to be on the other side of this and be in the locker room and hearing the other team celebrating, hearing them celebrate on your home floor. That was devastating.”
This time around, it was Tatum and the Celtics who were celebrating. It doesn’t matter who they faced, there are no asterisks on a banner, they beat everyone in front of them and did it handily.
Here are the five takeaways from the Celtics run to an NBA title.
1) Winning takes a team, not just stars
Talent wins in the NBA and rings are not won without a top-10 player in the league to lead the roster — Boston has that in Jayson Tatum, who scored 31 with 11 assists in Game 5 to close out the series (he is only this sixth player ever to have 30+ and 10+ in a closeout game, joining West, Frazier, Worthy, Jordan and Curry).
However, the lesson of the last two NBA Finals is that in the modern NBA it takes a team to win it all — not just assembling a “big three” and filling in whatever you can around them. It takes thoughtful team building around a star. Boston was the best team in the NBA this season, the way Denver was a season ago around Nikola Jokic.
It took Finals MVP Jaylen Brown. It took the best defensive backcourt in the league (who have some offensive skills, too) in Jrue Holiday and Derrick…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/mavericks-vs-celtics-nba-finals-123809200.html
Author : NBC Sports
Publish date : 2024-06-18 12:38:09
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