The Boston Celtics defeated The Dallas Mavericks in five games to win their league record setting 18th NBA Championship, ending their 16 year drought. The 2024 NBA season has officially come and gone, with The Boston Celtics being crowned the champions.
Finally after years of heartbreak in the NBA playoffs, jubilation once more in the city of Boston as fans and players celebrate their momentous championship, winning a record setting 18th NBA title, the most in the association’s history, breaking a tie the Los Angeles Lakers set in 2020.
Many Boston Celtics fans are ecstatic, as the core of Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown, Al Horford, Derrick White, and former head coach turned team general manager Brad Stevens, finally got over the hump.
This Celtics core came close in 2022 when they made the finals in a losing effort to The Golden State Warriors, however as previously stated this time was different.
The 2024 NBA Finals Winning Boston Celtics
This series was like watching a hot knife cut through butter.
A few weeks ago one of my colleagues, Matt Mendives, wrote a piece ranking the last 10 NBA Finals. I’m not sure where he would rank 2024 now that it is over, but I would certainly rank this one dead last.
For those of you who watched it, I’m sorry. This was a bloodbath.
The Mavericks were outmatched in every way this series, not exactly the must watch television I had in mind when writing my preview for the 2024 Finals.
The tandem of Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown proved too much for the defensively inconsistent Dallas Mavericks.
Tatum scored 22.2 points on surprisingly weak efficiency shooting 38.8% from the floor, 26.3% from three, and around his standard 92.6% from the free throw line. Aside from scoring, Tatum hauled in 7.8 rebounds, and had 7.2 assists per game across the 5 game series.
While Brown put up 20.8 points, 5.4 rebounds, and 5 assists, also on shockingly poor efficiency 44% from the field, 23.5% from three, and 73.3% from the free throw line.
Brown was awarded Finals MVP, giving him both the 2024 Eastern Conference Finals MVP and NBA Finals MVP, ECF MVP is still a new award so who knows how it will look in the future, it seems that players winning both be as atypical as we see in Major League Baseball.
Personally I thought shooting guard Jrue Holiday should have gotten it, while his 14.4 points and 3.8 assists per game were considerably less than Brown, his 7.4 rebounds are higher, and his efficiency was out of the world in comparison to the other two, shooting 53.6% from the field, 42.1% from three point territory, and a perfect 100% from the free throw line.
All three played tremendous defense on The Dallas Mavericks throughout the series.
This was obviously a group effort, as The Boston Celtics depth is inarguably the biggest reason they made it to the finals in the first place.
Point guard Derrick White had a spectacular finals playing ruthless defense on the Dallas backcourt, while averaging 13.8 points per game, with 1.2 steals, and a block.
37 year old big man Al Horford etched himself out of third place on the very unflattering list of NBA players who played the most playoff games without winning a championship, trailing only the Jazz duo of point guard John Stockton (182) and power forward Karl Malone (193).
Horford scored 7 points per game along with 6.2 rebounds while shooting 52% from the field, 47.1% from three, and 50% from the free throw line, however had two free throw attempts.
An unlikely hero for The Celtics was bench guard Payton Prtchard who hit two half court buzzer beater shots in this series, something that has become his calling guard during his time in the NBA.
Defensive anchor Kristaps Porzingis played in only three games, after he got injured mid series, in the one game where Porzingis played healthy (game 1) he put up 20 points, 6 rebounds, and three blocks. Overall he averaged 12.3 points, 3.7 rebounds, and 1.7 blocks.
Forward Sam Hauser scored 8.2 points across all five games and snagged 3 rebounds off the bench.
Boston Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla took over the reins for the team following the 2021-2022 season and The Celtics most recent run to the finals prior to ‘24, when then head coach Ime Udoka was let go.
Since Mazzulla took over he has been polarizing amongst Boston Celtics fandom to say the least, with most people fans and spectators alike thinking he should be let go if they failed to win this season, obviously that is not going to happen.
The Celtics had several other players who played more minor roles and mostly logging minutes in garbage time, but nonetheless they are champions all the same and they should be recognized
Congratulations Oshae Brissett, Xavier Tillman Sr., Svi Mykhailiuk, Luke Kornet, Neemias Queta, Jaden Springer, and Jordan Walsh, and the rest of The Boston Celtics staff and personnel.
The 2024 NBA Finals Losing Dallas Mavericks
The Dallas Mavericks lost in a losing effort this team was obviously not as deep as Boston, they were not preseason favorites out of their conference like Boston was out of the East, it wasn’t officiating, they lost fair and square.
Weirdly I think there is honor in that, they never quit even while getting obliterated in their fate clinching game 5.
Stars Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving played poorly given their expectations, and the rest of their players couldn’t stay hot after The Minnesota Timberwolves series.
If I had to compare this Dallas Mavericks team to any other team, I would pick the 2007 Colorado Rockies, they got scorching hot toward the end of their season, swept through The National League, and proceeded to be swept effortlessly in the 2007 World Series by The Boston Red Sox.
Sure they are different sports and The Mavericks avoided a sweep, but the time off between the 2007 NLCS and that year’s World Series has been talked about ever since the ending of what was called “Rocktober”.
Personally I find these two series eerily similar regardless it ended the same Boston hosted a duck boat parade.
The biggest reason Dallas lost in my opinion was their inability to efficiently and consistently score.
Dallas was leaning heavily on their backcourt tandem of Kyrie Irving and Luka Doncic, both All Stars and neither of which particularly impressed me this series.
People were debating who the best backcourt ever was and throwing out Luka and Kyrie before the series started and it aged like milk on a hot August afternoon.
Luka scored 29.2 points per game this series on efficiency that makes Allen Iverson look like Steve Nash, 47.2% from the field, and a putrid 24.4% from the three point line, and an awful 58.6% from the free throw line. Outside of scoring Doncic had 8.8 rebounds, 5.6 assists, and 2.6 steals per game.
Irving scored 19.8 points per game once again on weak efficiency, 41.4% from the field, 27.6% from three point territory, and going a perfect 9/9 from the charity stripe. Irving also had 3 rebounds and 5 assists per game.
Boston had an ungodly defense all season and postseason long, I get that but neither superstar could buy a bucket when it mattered most and they faltered routinely late in games,
Luka particularly looked out of shape, partly due to his weight which has been brought up countless times since coming into the league, and perhaps playing through injury.
Kyrie there is no excuse for, since leaving the Celtics prior to the 2019-2020 season, they’ve owned him in the playoffs.
Since leaving Boston, he has played them 14 times in the playoffs, half the time scoring below 20 points.
I praised The Celtics depth, so I have to mention The Mavericks lack thereof.
Only one other player averaged over 10 points for Dallas, that being PJ Washington who averaged 10.8 points on bad efficiency, shooting 40.9% from the field, 27.3% from three, and 75% from the free throw line.
The only other player worth mentioning in a positive light is rookie big man Dereck Lively II who scored just 5.6 points per game, but averaged 8.2 rebounds per game which was second best in the series behind only Doncic.
The Mavericks role players didn’t score a lot, but they also did not get too many shots.
Washington and wing Derrick Jones Jr. where the only players to attempt 30 or more field goal attempts for the entire series aside from Luka (144) and Irving (99), obviously the shot wasn’t falling, but the ball movement was weak all series,
In game 1 Dallas had 9 assists as a team in a 107-89 Celtics route.
They had an opportunity to win game 3 to stay alive, until Luka Doncic fouled out with four minutes to go in the matchup, on 6 blatant fouls some of which were pure frustration, leading to a viral moment when ESPN’s Brian Windhorst called out Doncic.
The Mavericks acquired Washington and center Daniel Gafford at the trade deadline this season, so hopefully head coach Jason Kidd could rally the troops and get more experience and continuity for next year, however it is clear to me that the standard Boston is at is far ahead of The Dallas Mavericks, and they really have some growing up to do.
The 2024 NBA Finals Moving Forward
Despite his age, Al Horford has released a statement saying he’s playing next year, and all reports seem to indicate Boston is running it back next year.
As for Dallas, who knows what they do this offseason.
Both teams caught some breaks, Boston beat an injured Miami Heat team, an injured Cleveland Cavaliers team, and an injured Indiana Pacers team.
Dallas was the first team to beat three fifty win teams heading into the finals, however The Los Angeles Clippers were injured (although nearly their entire roster has a history of being injury prone) and The Oklahoma City Thunder are a really young, raw team, being the youngest one seed in the history of the league.
Dallas eviscerated The Minnesota Timberwolves in five games, fair and square.
In a historic sense I think this will go down as the new age 2005 NBA Finals, nobody’s going to talk about, it was a bad watch, The Survivor: Redemption Island of The NBA.
Given how many injuries The Celtics benefitted from, it is hard to rank them among all time great teams, but their record speaks for themselves, 16-3 in the playoffs is nothing to scoff at.
Next season, we will see if Boston can defend the hill now that they are finally on top, and if The Dallas Mavericks can finally get over the hump themselves.
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