The Boston Celtics were told to ‘break them up’. Instead, their superstar duo put a myth ‘to rest’

Winning an NBA championship can change everything.

For Denver last season, its inaugural title vaulted the already highly-regarded Nikola Jokic into elite company while it perhaps did even more for Jamal Murray, who feared a torn ACL made him “damaged goods”.

The year prior it was Golden State and a dynasty reborn. Revived, not just by the superstar trio that had been there all along, but the emergence of new talent too.

And in 2021, the Milwaukee Bucks won their first-ever NBA title, led by one man — Giannis Antetokounmpo — who proved in an era of superteams that you can do it the hard way.

For Boston, while the 4-1 series win over Dallas capped off one of the most dominant seasons from in NBA history, it all starts and finishes with two players.

Because as much as this is a different Celtics team to the one that has come up short in the past few seasons, Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum have been the two constants in this era of Boston basketball.

On Tuesday when Brown was crowned Finals MVP after a dominant five-game stretch which saw him average 20.8 points, 5.4 rebounds, 5.0 assists and play elite defence, he was a hero.

But eight years ago when he was first introduced to the city of Boston, drafted by the Celtics with the third overall pick, the reception could not have been more different.

“That’s probably the worst one [reaction] I’ve gotten,” Celtics co-owner Wyc Grousbeck said at the time, with many in the crowd at Boston’s draft party at TD Garden booing the pick.

And that was just the start for Brown, who told reporters ahead of Game 4 against Dallas that when “you get scrutinised enough for a large part of your career, it becomes normal”.

“It’s kind of been that my whole career in a sense,” Brown added.

“Just being booed when you were drafted to saying you were overpaid, saying you were overpaid again. It’s been that the whole journey for me.

“It just becomes another headline.”

The headlines were there every time the Celtics couldn’t get over the hump, with talking heads debating that Brown and Tatum needed to broken up — that Boston couldn’t be a genuine championship contender until one of the two emerged as the clear best player.

But sometimes there doesn’t need to be a clear best player, a true No. 1 option, for a team to win a championship.

Sometimes, more important than having that one player capable of putting the team on his back is having that one player who is capable of doing that but instead finds other ways to make an impact.

That was the case with Tatum in this year’s Finals series. The buckets weren’t always falling. But even if Tatum is a great scorer, the Celtics needed more than just that anyway if they were to win the championship.

They needed Tatum the playmaker and the five-time All-Star provided that, dishing out 12 assists in Boston’s Game 2 in — just one short of his postseason record.

While Tatum’s first instinct has often been to take the shot, even if it wasn’t a great look, it was proof of his growth and maturity as a player and a leader that he understood in a team loaded with scoring options, he didn’t need to be that guy.

That guy that other people have long told him he needed to be.

“Think so?” Tatum said, smirking, when a reporter said he had probably been the “most scrutinised” player during this year’s playoffs.

With time and experience, Tatum has come of age. Brown too.

They have been on this journey together, even before Tatum got drafted to Boston in what was only Brown’s second year with the franchise.

Brown remembers a phone call from former Celtics executive Danny Ainge. He was in Spain. Málaga or Cordoba, to be specific.

“One of the two,” Brown said, adding it was around 4am.

“Don’t ask me why I was up. But Danny calls me, and he asked me, how do you feel about Jayson Tatum?

“I remember I played with him at camps, Top 100 camp. He was my roommate at the KD Elite Camp. We played on the same team in so many different [teams] — the Under Armour All-American game, we were roommates again.

“So it was like, I had a lot of experience with him. I played with him on the same team and there was a lot of respect. I said, I think it’s a great choice.

“Fast forward from there, we’ve been winning ever since.”

Although it was the periods where they weren’t winning that were the most important in putting Brown on the path to hoisting the Larry O’Brien and Bill Russell trophies.

First came the series against Golden State, who ended up going on to win the championship in 2022. But not before stealing Game 4 in Boston, after the Celtics had a chance to go up 3-1 in the series.

Then Boston went down in a seven-game series against Miami, who had to fight its way through the play-in tournament to even book a spot in the postseason in the first place.

Brown had eight turnovers and went 8-for-23 from the floor in Game 7 and looking back on that 103-84 loss in Boston, he described it as “embarrassing”. Embarrassing but motivating.

“I mean, last year, just falling short on your home floor, it definitely hurt. It was embarrassing, in my opinion,” Brown said.

“I felt like the team was relying on me. JT [Tatum] got hurt in Game 7 and I dropped the ball. To me, it was embarrassing. It drove me all summer, drove me crazy.

“In moments of embarrassment, in moments of coming up short, falling short is where the most growth takes place.”

That growth has been most apparent on the defensive side of the floor, setting a goal to make the first team All-Defense and while that didn’t end up happening there was little doubting Brown took serious strides this season to improve his defensive versatility and all-round application.

It showed in the games where it mattered most.

But as much as Brown is right to point out that “experience is the best teacher”, he also made a concerted effort to stress this is a “new team” to the one that had fallen short in the past.

“All year long we’ve been hearing about the Celtics are the past, for the last six to eight months, that’s all we’ve been hearing is all the different shortcomings we’ve had in the past,” he said.

The criticism was valid. The Celtics had tripped up at the final hurdle in recent years. There were genuine concerns about how Boston would fare in clutch situations.

But that was the old Celtics. A team that didn’t have an elite two-way player in Jrue Holiday, or a disruptive big man like Kristaps Porzingis, who changed the complexion of the series in the first two games.

They didn’t have this version of Derrick White either, with ESPN insider Adrian Wojnarowski reported on Friday he is a “prominent replacement candidate” for Team USA in the upcoming Olympics should Kawhi Leonard be unavailable due to his knee injury.

Wojnarowski added that extending White is a “priority” for the Celtics this summer, with the guard eligible for a contract extension worth $126 million over four years and otherwise set for free agency in 2025 if the two parties can’t come to an agreement.

Tatum, meanwhile, is also eligible for a supermax, five-year extension this summer worth around $315 million which would see him pass teammate Brown for the league’s richest contract.

More than anything though, like the Nuggets of last season, this is a star-studded Celtics team that plays ego-free basketball.

That selfless playing style lends itself to elite ball movement that allows its role players to shine, with Xavier Tillman even splashing a 3-pointer — his first of the playoffs — in Game 3.

“I think that’s why the transition for me was really easy,” Tillman, who was traded to Boston earlier this season, said.

“Knowing that Jrue Holiday was an All-Star last year and he’s playing the role that he’s playing now and he’s not complaining. He’s working hard, he’s dedicating himself to the team day in and day out.

“It makes it a lot easier for a guy like myself to come in every day with that same attitude of wanting to better myself so I’m ready when I’m needed.”

The same goes for Porzingis, who was given the nickname of ‘The Unicorn’ by Kevin Durant back in 2016 and bounced around from New York to Dallas and then Washington before finding his home in Boston.

“He’s seen a lot, he’s seen it all,” Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla said.

“He’s seen success. He’s seen tough times. He knows what the league is all about. I think at this point in his career, winning is the most important thing.”

Boston did plenty of that during the regular season, finishing 64-18 to post its first 60-win campaign since 2008-09.

There was no guarantee everything would come together when it mattered most, having benefited from a relatively soft to the Finals against teams without superstar names.

But when one of the Celtics’ own superstars went down and they travelled to Dallas for Game 3 with Porzingis unavailable, Boston still found a way to get the job done.

That, as it has all season long, started with being selfless and willing to sacrifice.

“I know sometimes talent doesn’t always mesh together. This does,” Holiday said.

“You saw it during the regular season. You’ve seen it throughout the playoffs, how any given night everybody is just unselfish.

“I feel like we sacrifice for each other. That’s kind of what makes it go.”

And that started with Tatum and Brown.

Celtics president Brad Stevens was told to break them up. Told that their skillsets overlapped too much, as if having two explosive, skilled and young wing players in the modern NBA was a bad thing.

“Give Brad Stevens a tonne of credit,” Doris Burke said after Boston’s Game 5 victory.

“Because how many years was it relentless? Break them up. They can’t play together. They can’t get over the mountaintop because their skillsets cross over too much.

“That is laid to rest.”