Playoffs

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Boston Celtics

BOSTON -- If any player knows how badly the Boston Celtics want to close out the Mavericks in Game 5 of the NBA Finals on Monday night, it's Dallas guard Kyrie Irving.

Irving spent two seasons with Boston (2017-19), but he's been a villain in the eyes of Celtics fans since leaving to sign with the Brooklyn Nets in the summer of 2019. Chants ragging on Irving frequently echoed throughout TD Garden in Games 1 and 2 -- a pair of Mavericks losses -- before Boston hit the road and came out of Dallas with a 3-1 lead in the series.

And with the Celtics now knocking on the door of the 18th title in franchise history, Irving has seemingly found peace with his place in Boston history as he prepares to return to a hostile environment.

"Now being older with hindsight looking back, I definitely would have taken time to know the people in the community and talked to some of the champions that have come before me," Irving told reporters on Sunday. "They have championship pedigree here. ... They expect you to seamlessly buy into the Celtics' pride, buy into everything Celtics.

"And if you don't, then you'll be outed. I'm one of the people that's on the outs. I'm perfectly fine with that, you know what I mean. I did it to myself."

But the Celtics greats of years past are the last thing on Boston coach Joe Mazzulla's mind.

Mazzulla was asked how special it would be to join coaches such as Red Auerbach, Bill Russell and K.C. Jones as those to lead a Celtics team to a championship. Without hesitation, he immediately shifted the focus to Game 5.

"That will never happen if you don't run back on defense, rebound, execute and get to your spacing," Mazzulla said. "That's the most important thing."

Boston lacked those fundamentals on Friday, failing to put the Mavericks away while ending up on the wrong end of a 122-84 blowout in Game 4.

Jayson Tatum finished with a team-high 15 points for the Celtics, and he's hoping that Boston rediscovers the brand of basketball that has led it to 79 wins in 100 games between the regular season and playoffs here in 2023-24.

"I think we maybe put too much pressure on ourselves at that moment to be perfect or think it was going to go how we wanted it to go," Tatum said of why the Celtics came up short on Friday. "Joe did a great job (Sunday) of reminding us that it's OK to smile during wars. It's OK to have fun during high-pressure moments. That's what makes our team unique and special."

Luka Doncic went for 29 points and Irving supplied 21 on Friday to keep Dallas' season alive. The Mavericks are trying to become the first team in NBA history to overcome a 3-0 deficit in a best-of-seven series.

Teams are 0-156 when losing the first three games of a series.

"I think the most important thing is to show that we believe," Doncic said. "I think we showed in Game 4. If not, if we wouldn't believe, we probably wouldn't have won that game. So I think obviously the talk is easy to talk about it, but then showing it is another thing."

The stars could be aligning for Boston, though, as Monday marks the 16-year anniversary of the Celtics' 2008 title. Boston hasn't gone all the way since.

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6/17 Game 5 Preview: Mavericks at Celtics

Taylor Snow

BOSTON – An underappreciated factor in Boston’s start-to-finish domination of the 2023-24 season has been Joe Mazzulla’s steadiness in keeping the team grounded. He hasn’t allowed the team to get too high after any of their 79 wins, nor has he allowed them to get too low following any of their 21 losses.

That approach was vital during the team’s recent 10-game postseason win streak in making sure the group wasn't becoming complacent. And it has come into play following Friday’s 122-84 Game 4 loss in Dallas, as Jayson Tatum explained Monday afternoon.

“I think we maybe put too much pressure on ourselves [in Game 4] to be perfect or thinking it was going to go how we wanted it to go,” Tatum said of his team’s mindset when it went for the sweep Friday night.

“Joe did a great job today of reminding us that it's okay to smile during wars. It's okay to have fun during high-pressure moments. That's what makes our team unique and special.

“We wanted to go for the kill, essentially, and we wanted to win so bad that maybe we got away from what makes us special and what makes us the Boston Celtics. Today, he just reminded each guy why he's important to this team, why we all need each other, and what each person brings to the table. And I think that was really important for us to go over.”

There’s nothing wrong with going for the kill –&nbsp;Jaylen Brown wants them to keep going for it – as long as the team is sticking to its values and not getting ahead of itself.

“We are at the precipice of completing what we set out to do at the beginning of the season,” Brown said. “Just need to remind everybody that it's just one possession at a time. We do it together and we fight like our lives depend on it, and I think we'll be all right.

“It's going to be difficult,” he continued. “You're going to have to fight and just stay in the moment. That's what matters the most. We come out and be a team. Win as a team, lose as a team. Just come out and be the best versions of ourselves.”

Mazzulla is avoiding any type of discussion that strays from the current moment. For example, when he was asked Monday afternoon what it would mean for him to join the select group of legendary Celtics coaches who have won a championship, he tip-toed around the subject, knowing there's still work to be done.

“That will never happen if you don't run back on defense, rebound, execute, and get to your spacing,” he responded.

In other words, do what they did in Game 4, and there will not be a celebration after Game 5 either.

Sam Hauser noted, “He does a good job of that, just keeping us grounded.”

Staying grounded is what got Boston to this point – being one win away from an NBA championship. Staying grounded is the only way they’ll be lifting Larry O’Brien into the air Monday night.

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Mazzulla Keeps Celtics Grounded Heading into Potential Game 5 Close-Out

Marc D'Amico

It’s not back to the drawing board for the Celtics. It’s simply back to Boston.

The truth of the matter is that regardless of the fashion in which the Celtics dropped Game 4 – and there’s no sugarcoating it, that was a butt-kicking – they still accomplished what they set out to do when they touched down Monday afternoon in Dallas. They grabbed one of the two games on the road, and they put themselves on the doorstep of their 18th World Championship

They have a 3-1 series lead and need just one more victory to reach the mountaintop. Those are the most significant numbers of all. As Jrue Holiday succinctly put it Friday night, “I think the series is, we are up 3-1 going back to Boston.”

There will be a healthy discussion about how Boston lost Game 4 in such runaway fashion. And there should be. The Celtics did not play well at either end of the court and, as they admitted after the defeat, Dallas was the team that played with more desperation and physicality.

While those assessments are true, the bottom line is that Friday’s debacle was not the result of a faulty game plan that needs to be reimagined. Instead, it was the result of the Celtics not executing their game plan up to their standards.

“We had the right mindset and right intentions,” Jayson Tatum said after the loss. “We wanted to come out and play super well and win, but it just didn't go that way tonight.”

That’s OK. It happens. Teams don’t play perfect basketball every time they take the floor. The Celtics just need to make sure that they return to playing up to their standards when Monday night’s Game 5 arrives, because when they do, they’ve proven to be incredibly difficult to beat.

Even more comforting than that is the fact that they’ve been impossible to beat more than twice in a row. Literally.

Boston is now 100 games into its season. Still, it has never lost more than two consecutive games. Dallas would need to double the Celtics’ longest losing streak of the season in order to win this series, meaning that a team that has never lost three straight games would actually need to lose four straight in order to drop the series.

These are all facts that play well into Boston’s favor. Add in the fact that no team in NBA history has ever overcome an 0-3 deficit to win a series, and the odds are certainly still looking great for the men in green and white.

There’s no doubt that Friday’s resounding loss will leave a sour taste in the mouths of the players, coaches and fans. It was ugly. There’s no way around it. But while the scoreboard may lead some to think that it’s back to the drawing board for Boston, the bottom line is that it was just one game. Zoom out from the emotions of Game 4 and the big picture shows that the Celtics accomplished their goal in Dallas.

They own a 3-1 series lead heading back to Boston, with a chance to secure their 18th banner on their home floor. Tatum, for one, is expecting those circumstances to lead to a hell of an environment inside TD Garden.

“I think it's going to be as loud as it's ever been in my seven years of being a Celtic,” he said.

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Celtics Head Back to Boston with Chance To Secure Banner 18 at TD Garden

After dominating their opponents for a month straight, the Boston Celtics finally got a taste of their own medicine Friday night. Desperate to avoid a Finals sweep, the Dallas Mavericks came out firing and made quick work of the C’s for their first win of the series.

It was a tight contest for all of seven minutes before Dallas broke the game open on a 10-0 run late in the first quarter. And it never looked back from there. The Mavs logged a 34-21 first quarter followed by a 27-14 second quarter. Boston never came close to making it a ballgame in the second half, trailing by as many as 48 points before falling, 122-84, at American Airlines Center.

It’s extremely difficult to sweep a Finals series, and that was proven Friday night. Boston’s monthlong win streak and two-month road win streak finally came to an end in the form of a rare clunker, but it’ll have a chance to close out the championship series back home for Game 5 Monday night.

Q1 :57.7 - [BOS 21-28] White 3pt Shot: Made (3 PTS)

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Keys to the Game: Mavericks 122, Celtics 84

DALLAS -- The Boston Celtics have history within their grasp going into Game 4 of the NBA Finals on Friday.

With a win, not only would the Celtics sweep the Dallas Mavericks, they would break a tie with the Los Angeles Lakers for the most NBA championships of all time with 18.

It seems to be a matter of when, not if, Boston closes out the series. The Celtics have been dominant in the playoffs, and that continued with a 106-99 victory in Game 3 to take a 3-0 Finals lead on Wednesday night.

NBA teams have gone 156-0 when taking a 3-0 lead in any best-of-seven series, and there's no reason to think that streak is in jeopardy with Boston riding a 10-game winning streak and a perfect 7-0 road record this postseason.

But the Celtics aren't getting ahead of themselves.

"Nobody is celebrating or anything," Celtics star Jayson Tatum said Thursday. "We still feel like there's a lot more that we can do. There's a lot more that we want to do."

Added veteran Al Horford: "We're not allowing ourselves to think ahead. We're just trying to lock in on what we have to do. The job is not done yet."

Boston has proven to be the deeper, more talented team throughout the Finals. When Tatum struggled on the offensive end in the first two games in Boston, Jaylen Brown and Jrue Holiday stepped up. Tatum then delivered his best scoring performance in Game 3 with 31 points.

The Celtics were without center Kristaps Porzingis (left leg) in Game 3 and managed to fill the void just fine. Porzingis remains day-to-day.

"Kristaps has gotten better from yesterday to today," Boston coach Joe Mazzulla said Thursday. "He's fighting like hell to play. But it's going to be up to us to protect him and to make sure that it's in the best interest for him as a player and as a person."

The Celtics' defense, meanwhile, continues to play at a high level, holding the Mavs to fewer than 100 points in each of the first three games.

This is a Mavs team that topped the 100-point mark in all five of their games against the Minnesota Timberwolves in the Western Conference finals. But Boston is a different animal with the versatility and various looks it can deploy.

Even when the Mavs had 62 combined points from stars Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving in Game 3, the other nine players who saw minutes combined for just 37 points. The Mavs haven't been able to put it all together yet, largely because of the Celtics' defense.

Irving said the Celtics' defense is "very special to watch from afar."

"But also as a competitor, as a hooper, to be experiencing it at this level, it's an incredible teacher for me," Irving said. "I use it as a moment to learn how hard it is to win, especially against a great team that's going to guard you the way that they're guarding us."

Doncic has shown his brilliance on the offensive end at times but has also struggled on defense. Doncic and Mavs coach Jason Kidd both answered questions about all-time greats enduring similar playoff struggles early in their careers, such as Michael Jordan against Detroit and LeBron James against the Spurs.

"You've got to go through lows first to go on top," Doncic said. "I think that's great experience."

Added Kidd: "For great players, you have to fail to understand how to be successful at the highest stage. This is the highest level, being in the Finals."

Despite the long odds, Doncic isn't ready to give in yet. He felt the Mavs showed something in how they responded to a 21-point deficit early in the fourth quarter of Game 3 and rallying to make it a one-point game. Though the comeback fell short, the Mavs didn't go down without a fight.

"We've just got to believe," Doncic said. "We talk about it in the locker room. I know we can do it, and we're going to believe until the end."

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6/14 Game 4 Preview: Celtics at Mavericks

The Boston Celtics will seek to earn the ultimate close-out victory Friday night against the Dallas Mavericks, a triumph that would further substantiate the team’s season-long marketing tag of it being “Different Here” in Boston.

The reasoning behind such substantiation, of course, is that Boston had struggled mightily in close-out situations over the course of the previous six seasons. The Celtics had gone just 10-8 in close-out games since the beginning of the 2018 Playoffs, which was the first postseason Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum played together.

Now, as that duo and their teammates head into Friday’s Game 4 of the Finals, they have an opportunity to complete this postseason with a perfect 4-0 record in close-out games.

It really is Different Here this time around.

Boston has played at an elite level in close-out games this postseason. First, it ended Miami’s season in embarrassing fashion with a 34-point win during Game 5 at TD Garden. Then, it sent the Cavaliers packing with a 15-point victory during another Game 5 at the Garden. And most recently, Boston finished off a sweep of the Pacers with clutch play down the stretch of Game 4 in Indiana for a 105-102 win.

Something is certainly different here this season, even if Derrick White can’t quite put his finger on it.

“I don't know exactly what it is, but we're just locked in,” he said of Boston’s now-perfect trend in close-out games. “We know what's at stake. We understand that close-out games are the toughest, and we just come with an extra edge.”

That edge has been evident in both physical and mental forms. Clearly, the team has needed to play great basketball on the court in order to swiftly end three opponents’ seasons thus far. It’s an improvement from a mental perspective, however, that has allowed for such excellent play on the court.

It appears that there has been a shift in mental approach and mental stability for the Celtics this postseason. Boston has learned from its mistakes of seasons past, and it no longer makes them. The team now excels during the most critical of moments, rather than tightening up during them. Jayson Tatum attributes these mental improvements to the teachings of Joe Mazzulla and the coaching staff throughout this season.

Asked what has led to the team’s success in close-out games this postseason, Tatum told Celtics.com, “I think our ability to go over situational basketball during practice. Joe and the coaching staff, they do a great job of showing us a lot of different things throughout the season of how games end, whether it's teams being up six, do you foul, or closing out quarters and how that can have an effect for the start of the next quarter.”

The superstar wing continued, “So going over situational basketball in practice and in shootarounds and understanding what we want to do in those moments, what plays and reads we want to go over in late-game situations, so when those moments do come about throughout the game, we're comfortable.”

The Celtics had rarely felt comfortable in close-out opportunities throughout the prior six seasons. Now, they’re not only comfortable in those scenarios, but they’re also confident. Those two characteristics have set them up on the doorstep of the ultimate close-out victory that would secure their legacies forever as NBA champions who raised Banner 18.

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Boston, the Newfound Close-Out Kings, Seek Ultimate Close-Out Win in Game 4

DALLAS – As soon as the final buzzer of Game 3 sounded Wednesday night, Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum converged on the Dallas Mavericks' center-court logo and shared a long embrace.

In the seven years of their partnership, this moment marked the closest they’d ever come to reaching their goal of winning a championship, and they wanted to soak in all of the emotions that came with it.

Both were exhausted and prideful in how they held off a late Dallas rally to hang on for a 106-99 win. They were exhilarated to be up 3-0 in the NBA Finals. And they are hopeful that they will finally get the job done after all they've been through together.

“Just showing the emotions of the game,” Jayson Tatum later described of that moment. “Two guys that were excited, tired, that after the game, we just – we were not necessarily saying 'one more' or anything like that. We were just saying, 'however long it takes.' Nobody is relaxed. Nobody is satisfied. Just at that moment,  I just told him I was proud of him. And he said the same thing; that we've got to keep fighting. We can't relax.”

“Keep fighting” was the mantra of the night. The Celtics saw a 21-point fourth-quarter lead dwindle to one thanks to a 21-2 rally by Dallas. But Boston never allowed the Mavs to get over the hump, closing out on a 13-7 run.

“You never want to give up a 20-point lead,” said Tatum. “Obviously we wish we would have got some better shots, took care of the ball. But things happen. It's never going to go how you expect it, and we talk about that all the time. But if you want to be a champion, you have to be resilient in those moments, and we showed that tonight.”

Both Tatum and Brown were resilient in those late-game moments, hitting big shots and coming up with big stops. Brown began Boston’s closing run with a tip-in off an offensive rebound. Then Tatum hammered the nail in the coffin with a driving dunk that sucked the life out of American Airlines Center.

Tatum (31 points, six rebounds, five assists) led the team in scoring while Brown (30 points, eight rebounds, eight assists) led the team in both rebounds and assists.

They became just the second Celtics tandem to score at least 30 points in the same game, joining John Havlicek (40 points) and Bailey Howell (30 points), who accomplished the feat in the 1968 championship-clinching game over the Los Angeles Lakers.

They also became the sixth duo in Finals history to record at least 30 points, five rebounds, and five assists apiece, joining Denver’s Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray (2023 Finals), Golden State’s Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant (twice in the 2017 Finals), Orlando’s Penny Hardaway and Shaquille O’Neal (1995 Finals), Los Angeles’ Elgin Baylor and Jerry West (1968 Finals), and Philadelphia’s Hal Greer and Wali Jones (1967 Finals).

Holding off Dallas’ comeback attempt was the most important Finals moment of Brown and Tatum’s partnership to date. Had the Mavericks come back to win, this series would have had an entirely different feel heading into Game 4.

Instead, the Celtics are just one step from reaching their ultimate goal. And their superstar tandem deserved a chance to stop and embrace the position that they now find themselves in.

“Those are the moments which you have to just live for,” said Brown. “We've been in those moments a lot. We just needed to be patient, to be poised.

“We were able to make plays and find a way to win. And we've been in those positions, and we've lost. It was great to overcome that with my brother, Jayson, and with our team. That was special.”

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Brown & Tatum Embrace Gritty Game 3 Win, Putting C’s on Cusp of Glory

In order to get over the mountaintop, one must deliver championship responses.

The Boston Celtics had them Wednesday night.

The Celtics righted their ship just in time to take a commanding 3-0 series lead after it appeared the Mavs may pull off a miraculous comeback. Boston’s once 21-point, fourth-quarter lead had been whittled down all the way to one with 3:37 left. And that’s when Boston made play after play to secure a 106-99 victory.

First, it was Jaylen Brown with a putback layup. Then, it was Derrick White with a 3-pointer. Then, Jayson Tatum put home a thunderous slam to make it a six-point game with 2:17 left.

Dallas again climbed to within two with 1:20 left but again, the C’s responded. Brown canned a pullup jumper to push it back to four, and then White and Tatum connected on four straight free throws to make it a 106-98 game with 14.6 seconds left.

Combine all of those scores together with just enough defense, and all-out effort across the board during the final three-plus minutes, and you have yourself a bona fide championship response. That championship response now has the Celtics on the doorstep of securing their 18th&nbsp;World Championship.

Q4 2:17 - [BOS 100-94] Tatum Driving Dunk Shot: Made (29 PTS) Assist: White (4 AST)