Celtics beat Mavs, win 18th NBA championship

Source: The New York Times
Author: Joe Vardon

BOSTON -- The Boston Celtics are again champions of the NBA, having claimed a milestone title Monday night that will reverberate from coast to coast and carve out legacies for the current pillars of this storied franchise.

The Celtics beat the Dallas Mavericks 106-88 in Game 5 of the 2024 NBA Finals to win the series, 4-1, and claim a league-record 18th NBA championship. Boston ended a 16-year title drought and broke a tie with the rival Los Angeles Lakers that had stood since 2020.

Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, the Celtics' co-anchors since Tatum's rookie year in 2018, can formally take their place among the Boston legends to hang banners before them. Tatum finished with 31 points, 11 assists and eight rebounds, while Brown added 21 points.

Boston led by 21 points at halftime, thanks to a 49-foot 3-pointer from Payton Pritchard launched just behind halfcourt to beat the second-quarter buzzer. Celtics center Kristaps Porziņģis, out since Game 2 with a rare tendon displacement injury near his left ankle, returned for the clincher and scored five points. Jrue Holiday, who like Porziņģis was added last offseason to fortify this already deep roster, contributed 15 points. He is a champion for the second time.

The Mavericks, the No. 5 seed in the West with only two rotation players over the age of 27, were led in scoring by Luka Dončić with 28 points and 12 rebounds.

Tatum and Brown have helped steer Boston to six conference finals and two NBA Finals, and finally broke through Monday night. They set an NBA record for playoff games played together (107) before winning a title. Tatum accumulated the fifth-most playoff points at the time of his first title, trailing only Jerry West, LeBron James, Dirk Nowitzki and Kevin Durant.

Al Horford, the Celtics' 38-year-old center, set a record for the most playoff games (186) before his first title.

On the other end of the spectrum, Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla, 35, is the second-youngest coach since the ABA-NBA merger in 1976 to win a title, trailing only Pat Riley in 1982. Mazzulla is the sixth coach to win at age 35 or younger and the first since Bill Russell in 1969.

For more on Game 5 of the NBA Finals, follow The Athletic's live blog.

The Celtics are the NBA's first No. 1 overall seed heading into the postseason to win since the Golden State Warriors beat the Cleveland Cavaliers in five games in the 2017 finals. Boston also snapped its second-longest lapse between titles in franchise history. The longest was 21 seasons from 1987 to 2008 -- the last of the Celtics' titles until this one.

This story will be updated.