The Boston Celtics again stand alone among NBA champions.
Jayson Tatum had 31 points, 11 assists and eight rebounds as the Celtics topped the Dallas Mavericks 106-88 on Monday night to win the franchise’s 18th championship, breaking a tie with the Los Angeles Lakers for the most in league history.
Boston earned their latest title on the 16th anniversary of hoisting their last Larry O’Brien Trophy in 2008. It marks the 13th championship won this century by one of the city’s Big 4 professional sports franchises.
Jaylen Brown, voted the NBA Finals Most Valuable Player, added 21 points, eight boards and six assists.
Jrue Holiday finished with 15 points and 11 rebounds while centre Kristaps Porzingis also provided an emotional lift, returning from a two-game absence because of a dislocated tendon in his left ankle to chip in five points in 17 minutes.
It helped the Celtics cap a post-season that saw them go 16-3 and finish with an 80-21 overall record. That .792 winning percentage ranks second in team history behind only the Celtics’ 1985-86 championship team that finished 82-18 (.820).
Luka Doncic finished with 28 points and 12 rebounds for Dallas, who failed to extend the series after avoiding a sweep with a 38-point win in Game 4.
Kyrie Irving finished with just 15 points on 5-of-16 shooting and has now lost 13 of the last 14 meetings against the Celtics team he left in the summer of 2019 to join the Brooklyn Nets.
Australian duo Josh Green and Dante Exum contributed for the Mavericks with 14 and four points respectively.
NBA teams are now 0-157 in post-season series after falling into a 3-0 deficit.
Boston never trailled and led by as many as 26 feeding off the energy of the Garden crowd.
Second-year coach Joe Mazzulla, at age 35, also became the youngest coach since Bill Russell in 1969 to lead a team to a championship.
Russell’s widow, Jeannine Russell, and his daughter Karen Russell were in TD Garden to salute the newest generation of Celtics champions.
They watched current stars Tatum and Brown earn their first rings. It was the trade that sent 2008 champions Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce to Brooklyn in 2013 that netted Boston the draft picks they eventually used to select Brown and Tatum third overall in back-to-back drafts in 2016 and 2017.
The All-Stars came into their own this season, leading a Celtics team that built around taking and making a high number of three-pointers, and a defence that rated as the league’s best during the regular season.
With AAP.
