Jayson Tatum put his hands behind his head, with TD Garden fans standing applauding around him, and took it all in.
Walking to the bench, he put both arms around Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla.
The trip was complete.
The Boston Celtics are once again alone among the NBA champions.
Tatum had 31 points, 11 assists and eight rebounds, and the Celtics beat the Dallas Mavericks 106-88 on Monday night to win the franchise’s 18th championship, breaking a tie with the Los Angeles Lakers for most in the league. league history.
Boston won its latest title on the 16th anniversary of lifting its last Larry O’Brien Trophy in 2008. It marks the 13th championship won this century by one of the city’s big four professional sports franchises.
“It means a lot,” Tatum said onstage after the team received the trophy from NBA Commissioner Adam Silver. “A lot of time has passed. And damn, I’m grateful.”
Jaylen Brown added 21 points, eight rebounds and six assists and was named MVP of the NBA Finals.
“I share this with my brothers and my partner in crime Jayson Tatum,” Brown said after the 107th playoff game he and Tatum played together, the most for any duo before winning a title.
Jrue Holiday finished with 15 points and 11 rebounds. Center Kristaps Porzingis also provided an emotional boost, returning from a two-game absence due to a dislocated tendon in his left ankle to score five points in 17 minutes.
They helped the Celtics cap a postseason in which they went 16-3 and finished with an 80-21 overall record. That .792 winning percentage ranks second in team history, behind only the 1985-86 Celtics championship team, which finished 82-18 (.820).
Mazzulla, in his second season, at age 35 also became the youngest coach since Bill Russell in 1969 to lead a team to a championship.
“In life you have very few opportunities to be great,” Mazzulla said.
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 victory in Game 4. The Mavericks had gone 3-0 in Game 5 of this postseason , with Doncic scoring. at least 31 points in each of them.
Kyrie Irving finished with just 15 points on 5-of-16 shooting and has lost 13 of the last 14 games against the Celtics team he left in the summer of 2019 to join the Brooklyn Nets.
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.
Dallas led 16-15 early before the Celtics closed the first quarter on a 12-3 run that included eight combined points from Tatum and Brown.
The Celtics did it again in the second quarter when the Mavericks cut what had been a 15-point deficit to nine. Boston finished the period on a 19-7 run that was capped by Payton Pritchard’s half-court buzzer-beater, his second such shot in the series, to give Boston a 67-46 halftime lead. .
Over the final two minutes of the first and second quarters, the Celtics outscored the Mavericks 22-4.
The Celtics never looked back.
New era of Celtics champions
Russell’s widow, Jeannine Russell, and daughter Karen Russell were at TD Garden to greet the new generation of Celtics champions.
They watched current Celtics stars Tatum and Brown win their first rings. It was the trade that sent 2008 champions Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce to Brooklyn in 2013 that gave Boston the draft picks it ultimately used to select Brown and Tatum third overall in consecutive drafts in 2016 and 2017.
The All-Stars excelled this season, leading a Celtics team that was built around taking and making a ton of three-pointers, and a defense that was rated the best in the league during the regular season.
The duo reached at least the Eastern Conference finals as teammates four times previously.
They finally reached the finish line in their fifth race together in the playoffs.
After both struggled offensively at times in the series, Tatum and Brown hit a rhythm in Game 5, combining for 31 points and 11 assists in the first half.
He helped highlight all the attributes that made Boston the most formidable team in the NBA this postseason: spreading teams, sharing the ball and wreaking havoc on defense.
And it put a championship arc on a dizzying run for the Celtics, which saw them lose in the Finals to the Golden State Warriors in 2022 and then not return last season after a Game 7 home loss to the Miami Heat in the conference finals.
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