THE CELTICS ARE SO PRECIOUS, WE SHOULD BRACE FOR MORE CHAMPIONSHIPS
Banner No. 18 was the work of Brad Stevens, who saw glory for Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, found Jrue Holiday and Kristaps Porzingis, and hired coach Joe Mazzulla — among the best NBA teams in years
Have we ever seen confetti blowing sideways, a June snowstorm in New England? The green and white particles created such a frenzy that we didn’t need to witness any drunken, destructive fools. The Celtics are much bigger than civic wreckage, waiting for the famed duck boats as they conclude what could be the first of several NBA titles.
Their city has won so many championships that we kind of lost track — 12 in 17 years. Boston was forced to wait five seasons for another, poor babes, but this one, despite Tom Brady and David Ortiz and all the rest, means as much as any of them. All we missed was a cigar, to salute Red Auerbach, and that was many decades ago.
This was the melding of Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, who became one instead of a stirring pot. This was the incorporation of Jrue Holiday, who arrived quietly when the world buzzed about Damian Lillard, and Kristaps Porzingis, a unicorn who made the team seem invincible, and Derrick White, who arrived and lost his teeth. None of it would have happened without Brad Stevens, who refused to deal Tatum or Brown and decided they would win glory. The collegiate creature from Indiana entered a cauldron that only had seen one banner since the mid-1980s, allowing the Los Angeles Lakers to tie them atop the league board.
Not anymore. Don’t ever doubt the value of a basketball general manager, who smiled Monday night as Brown accepted the Bill Russell Finals MVP award and Tatum cried as his son tugged at his shorts. Stevens stayed in the background while his coach finally gained national acclaim, a year after Joe Mazzulla struggled and returned to finagle a 16-3 record in the postseason and 64-18 in the regular season. The Celtics won 80 games to win their 18th title, and if JJ Redick sat there in a suit thinking he’ll tie it in Los Angeles, please don’t insult us. They are the kings again, as they always were.
“What are they gonna say now? What are they gonna say now?” Tatum asked after the Dallas Mavericks and Luka Doncic were blown out, 106-88, in Game 5. “Oh my God. Oh my God. It’s a surreal feeling. We did it. We did it! Oh my God, we did it.” Then he screamed it again, just as Kevin Garnett once yelled, “Anything is possible!”
“I share this with my brothers and my partner in crime, Jayson Tatum,” said Brown, “who was with me the whole way, so we share this s— together.”
And there was Mazzulla, who told his players Sunday that it was OK to “smile during wars,” finally managing a grin after coaching the Maine Red Claws and Fairmount State before an emergency appointment. “You have very few chances in life to be great,” he said. “When you have chances, you have to own it. Our guys owned it.” To think the Celtics, only two years ago, had little choice after Ime Udoka was run off amid an interoffice romantic affair. In came Mazzulla, who shows clips of killer whales, hyenas and UFC fighters to his players. When he earned a monthly coaching award, White said, “Hey, congratulations.”
“Nobody cares,” said Mazzulla, just 35.
They care now. Why would he use MMA? “Usually every single fight. But I think it was (UFC) 302,” he said of a Finals look-see. “The guy gets hit in the nuts, complains to the ref and complains to the referee and gets distracted, and then he gets choked out the next round. So he lost his focus. You see (the fighter) gets hit in the nuts, looks at the referee, knocks the guy out five seconds later. So it’s the approach to what happens to you and how you handle it. The closer you think you are to beating someone, the closer you are to getting your ass kicked.”
His attacks were beautiful. Anyone who thought the Mavericks had a chance, after one fine performance, hasn’t been watching Stevens this season. Ever imagine how a marketing associate at Eli Lilly and Company decided to enter college basketball, as a volunteer coach at Butler, could adapt so well to the NBA? He almost beat Duke in the NCAA championship game and now has a Larry O’Brien Trophy. “Brad was brilliant,” Celtics owner Wyc Grousbeck said. “He knew we needed to make changes. Brad got it done with Jrue and KP. And here we are.” Knowing Udoka is in Houston and far away, Grousbeck raved about Mazzulla.
“The brilliance of Joe — he went far beyond my expectations. He said we’ve got to win or die trying,” he said. “These guys played great Celtics basketball.”
It helped to have Holiday, who looked in the stands after winning his second title in three years and said, “We felt we got it together. The world saw it.”
And White, who said, “I’d lose all my teeth for a championship.”
And veteran Al Horford, who told Grousbeck, “This is how I saw it eight years ago. I told you this would happen.”
After a Game 4 humbling in Dallas, Brown brought back past lessons. “All year long, we’ve been hearing about the Celtics of the past. For the last six to eight months, that’s all we’ve been hearing is all the different shortcomings we’ve had in the past. This is a new team,” he said. “We’ve learned from those experiences. And in these moments, you can see that we learned from it. We stepped up to the plate.”
It was a rare baseball reference in a town that has given up on the Red Sox, whose owner won’t spend big money, and the Patriots, whose former quarterback works for Fox and whose former head coach might be dating a 24-year-old at age 72. Boston dealt with a heat emergency, which led hundreds of celebrants to surround an ambulance outside TD Garden. Whatever they did Tuesday morning — I don’t want to know — should wait until Friday’s parade, after the players return from a Miami party.
The thrills are just beginning, not what they want to hear in the Western Conference, where teams will keep beating each other while Boston guns for more. Tatum and Brown had played 107 playoff games. That’s the most for anyone before winning a title. As it was, fans had snarled again at Kyrie Irving when he fell into the ESPN broadcast booth, knocking over an employee. He averaged only 14.3 points in three Boston games. He left town in 2019. His former teammates won it all.
“Failing at this stage definitely sucks,” Irving said. “It’s a bitter feeling because you want to keep playing, and you feel like your best game is coming up next and the shots that you shoot next game are coming up. We got to the top of the mountain and we failed. So now we have to start at the bottom, and that should be inspiring.”
Said Doncic: “They are a great team. They have been together for a long time, and they had to go through everything, so we just got to look at them, see how they play, maturity, and they have some great players. We can learn from that. We’ve got to fight next season.”
Outside, in a frenetic arena, Tatum was handed the trophy by commissioner Adam Silver. “It means the world,” he said. “It’s been a long time. And damn I’m grateful.”
And what did his son, Deuce, say to him? “He told me that I was the best in the world,” Tatum said. “I said, ‘You’re damn right I am.’ ’’
Was the confetti still blowing sideways? Felt like it.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.