The Celtics are the first 3-and-D team to win it all — and a new blueprint for NBA title hopefuls

The Boston Celtics aren’t just NBA champions. They’re an aspirational blueprint.

With an 80-21 overall record this season, these Boston Celtics were just as different as they were dominant. There was no Nikola Jokić, LeBron James or Stephen Curry on this team. There was no MVP or former MVP who could reasonably stake claim to being known as the game’s best.

Historically, that’s an anomaly. It’s also why the 29 other teams in the NBA are undoubtedly watching with a close eye.

The Celtics didn’t win by having the game’s supreme player, which is the lesson here, because there is only one of those, and damn near impossible to acquire. Instead, the Celtics won by having the best team, one constructed with a certain modern-day vision of a five-out system. The 3-and-D player became en vogue in the 21st century, but this was the first 3-and-D team — a deep squad built to rain from downtown and defend at a high level. For now, 3-and-D was a better formula than M-V-P.

There’s a saying in basketball: live by the 3, die by the 3. The Boston Celtics don’t abide by that ethos. They seem to take on a different angle: live by the 3, thrive by the 3.

The Celtics took more 3-pointers than any team in the NBA this regular season. A total of 3,482, to be exact. The second team on that leaderboard was the team they just beat in the NBA Finals, the Dallas Mavericks. The Celtics’ proportion of field-goal attempts that were 3-pointers, 47.1 percent of all shots, set a record for an NBA champion. In the Finals, that percentage swelled to 49.6 percent, exemplifying how much they believed in the shot. To put it in perspective, the 2008 champion Celtics took 121 3-pointers in the Finals. This year’s Celtics just took 207 3-pointers — in one fewer game.

The thing is, the Celtics didn’t even get particularly hot from downtown. Brown and Tatum shot 23.5 percent and 26.8 percent, respectively, from beyond the arc in the series. But overall, through sheer volume, the Celtics scored 66 more points from deep than the Mavericks did and routinely attacked the open driving lanes the 3-point spacing provided.

It’s widely…

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Author : Yahoo Sports

Publish date : 2024-06-18 15:27:19

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