Boston Celtics again stand alone among NBA champions.
Jayson Tatum scored 31 points, 11 assists and eight rebounds as the Celtics topped the Dallas Mavericks 106-88 on Tuesday (AEST) to win the franchise’s 18th championship, breaking a tie with the Los Angeles Lakers for the most in league history.
Jaylen Brown added 21 points, while Jrue Holiday finished with 15 points and 11 rebounds. 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.
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Boston earned its latest title on the 16th anniversary of hoisting its last Larry O’Brien Trophy in 2008.
It helped the Celtics cap a postseason that saw them go 16-3 and finish with an 80-21 overall record. That .792 winning percentage ranks second in team history.
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.
Luka Doncic finished with 28 points and 12 rebounds for Dallas, which failed to extend the series after avoiding a sweep with a 38-point win in game four.
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.
NBA teams are now 0-157 in postseason series after falling into a 3-0 deficit. Boston never trailed and led by as many as 26 feeding off the energy of the Garden crowd.
After both struggling at times offensively in the series, Tatum and Brown hit a groove in game five, combining for 31 points and 11 assists in the first half.
It helped bring out all the attributes that made Boston the NBA’s most formidable team this postseason – spreading teams out, sharing the ball, and causing havoc on defense.
And it put a championship bow on dizzying two-year stretch for the Celtics, that saw them lose in the finals to the Golden State Warriors in 2022 and then fail to return last season after a game seven home loss to the Miami Heat in the conference finals.