These Boston Celtics mean everything

The weirdest thing happened to me yesterday morning.

I woke up at 9:30 after sleeping about three hours, having stayed up until 2:30 for the start of Game 5, 5:15 for the end of it, and another hour and change to watch everyone freak out about the fact that the Boston Celtics had just won their 18th NBA championship.

I’m not the most sure how I managed to fall asleep in the first place. When I took my watch off to sleep like I do every night, my heart rate read 126 beats per minute. That’s around what I get up to when I’m running, playing tennis, or watching a horror movie, though I don’t keep the closest track of it. I was on the phone with my family back home, and I put my phone on my chest while I was lying down in my bed trying to calm down, and I could see it bouncing as my heart beat out of my body.

But I managed to fall asleep, despite the fact that the Celtics had just won their 18th NBA championship, and that I was still in Germany, away from my American friends, family, and colleagues. I could still share the moment with them, but not for very long. I still had class the next morning.

So I slept for about three hours, which is right on the line between better and worse than just not sleeping at all. When I woke up, I was tired, but probably not as tired as I would have been if I just hadn’t slept at all. And then the strangest thing happened.

After I made my coffee, ate my croissant because I’m European now, and walked out the door, I had a realization about the Celtics winning their 18th NBA championship: no one around me cared.

I was walking to class like it was a normal Tuesday, and no one in my morning class cared about it. It was unlike any previous championship I had experienced; my professors didn’t talk about it, there were no jerseys on the buses or on the streets. In a faraway land back in Boston, there were probably still parties going on, but over here, it was like the Celtics hadn’t just won their 18th NBA championship.

But they had. Alone in a strange land that isn’t so strange to me anymore — the championship, season, and immortal accomplishment existed only in my head and across an ocean. So I turned on some music, walked to class, and tried to figure out what it all meant.

For the NBA, it means the Celtics just started a revolution. Or maybe they’re just too good.

This team’s character was, is, and ever shall be beautiful. They represent everything we love about sports. They embodied selflessness, sacrifice, persistence, finesse, physicality, and focus all in one blaze of glory that tore through the NBA Playoffs before the rest of the league could figure out what was going on.

Every other team had something else in mind. The Dallas Mavericks were too young, and Luka Doncic wasn’t ready for the stage he was trying to dance on. The championship-appeased Denver Nuggets couldn’t muster the fire to overcome the hungry Minnesota Timberwolves, and the Timberwolves couldn’t overcome their question marks to get around Dallas.

The Eastern Conference, kneecapped by injuries and by the Celtics’ overwhelming force, simply capitulated. The Celtics weren’t immune from the injury virus themselves, losing Kristaps Porzingis for the vast majority of their run, something I said in January would make or break their ability to win a title. I’d say I was 68 percent wrong.

But the Celtics didn’t just cruise because of opposing injuries; their roster was masterfully constructed to endure such disasters in ways other teams simply couldn’t. Replacing Porzingis with Al Horford, an aging but incredibly solid starting center, wasn’t as damning as the Indiana Pacers replacing Tyrese Haliburton with Ben Sheppard.

Nor was it simply depth. The Celtics didn’t thrive in Porzingis’ absence because they had enough warm bodies lying around, though it certainly helped. They lost just two total games without him because everyone understood their role, and played it to perfection.

The revolutionary nature of this team is how their individual sacrifice created an indomitable whole far greater than the sum of its parts. Jayson Tatum’s willingness to make the extra pass every single time in the face of double, triple, and quadruple teams is how the Celtics navigated complex Mavericks defensive sets. Jaylen Brown’s maniacal commitment to guarding Doncic like his life depended on it for upwards of 200 minutes this series was the biggest reason the Celtics won, and rightly earned him the MVP trophy.

But star sacrifice isn’t revolutionary enough. The Celtics also finally broke the NBA’s mathematical infrastructure with a three-point sledgehammer directly to the load-bearing wall. No stat was more predictive of their success than their three-point percentage, going an outrageous 40-1 when they shot 40 percent or better from beyond the arc.

That’s insane. With the absurd talent level of NBA players, only the rarest closeout will actually be able to affect a three-point shot, even from relatively mid-level guys. Sam Hauser is the perfect example: he’s able to pull a solid look from three out of thin air even if his defender is in his chest.

This is an existentially horrifying situation for the rest of the league. With modern science still unable to reliably prevent threes, opposing teams are basically expected to pray that they don’t go in… at a high enough rate… enough times in a playoff series.

I’m sure Darryl Morey would disagree, but this style will forever be known as Joe Mazzulla Ball, since history is written by the winners. When it doesn’t work, it looks disgusting, but when it does, it’s downright glorious.

One of my favorite things about sports is how it can feel like a party out of nowhere. One moment I’m watching a regular season game, sipping a ginger ale and talking to my friend Max about a funny post I saw about Kyrie Irving. Next thing you know, the Celtics can’t miss, and we’re losing our minds.

Mazzulla Ball can beat any team, no matter how formidable. Much was said about the Celtics not having the best player in the series in the NBA Finals, but even a player as special as Doncic couldn’t swim through the tidal wave of threes the Celtics poured on. All the while, it’s complemented with layers of additional goodness, such as Porzingis search-and-destroy post ups, Tatum mismatch drives and Brown fast break dunks. And Jrue Holiday and Derrick White can create their own shot when they have to. Spelling it out, it just sounds unfair.

And Mazzulla Ball fails miserably without defense, something the Celtics hung all their many hats on in these NBA Finals. If the threes aren’t falling for a stretch, the defense has to be stingy or the other team could run away with the game. If they are falling, stops can put the game away before the other team knew what hit them.

However revolutionary the threes were, the Celtics would not be standing where they are today without the defensive commitment up and down the roster. Hauser made stop after stop on opposing players who underestimated him, while Pritchard always brought intensity even with his physical limitations. And Brown was named Finals MVP for his work on Doncic, what I’d argue was the single most important trend of the series. Brown dragged him to the mat every single time down the floor, and would not allow him to get comfortable or settle in. When I think of this series in 10 years, I’ll remember Brown’s defense before I think about threes.

But perhaps it’s not a revolution. Perhaps the Celtics caught lightning in a bottle with a roster built to exploit this exact tactic. Perhaps it was organizational continuity, with President of Basketball Operations Brad Stevens working so closely with Mazzulla to build the perfect basketball-destroyer-robot that just finished ripping up the league and looks poised to keep rampaging. Or perhaps the Celtics are just better.

Whatever it may be, the NBA must now solve The Celtics Problem. The narrative of the team that comes close and always falls short is over, and the era of Boston is officially on. Who will challenge them first?

David Butler II-USA TODAY Sports

“What they gon’ say now? What they gon’ say NOW?!”

It’s no coincidence that one of the first things Jayson Tatum did after winning was to call out the doubters. For the team, this means vindication.

Never will arguments about if Brown and Tatum can play together hold any water. Never will those two have to worry about contrived, untrue, and unfair narratives that they dislike each other, since the world will finally dismiss the clowns who do say that. Those two, should they want to, could remain Celtics together forever. You never know where life will take you, but I have a hunch they might actually do it after this.

(If they actually do and somehow have a co-retirement ceremony, I am going to cry. Just letting everyone know now.)

“I share this with my brothers, and my partner in crime: Jayson Tatum,” said Brown after accepting the Finals MVP trophy. “He was with me the whole way, so we share this sh— together.”

Al Horford will not retire the man with the most career playoff games before winning a championship. That dishonor will rightly remain with Karl Malone, and Horford’s career will be remembered for the wonderful and valued player that he was, rather than for something he didn’t achieve. And with Porzingis’ injury, he didn’t have an easy path to his first ring, but he was needed the whole way through. He finally got to play on a team committed to winning, and he will continue to be a huge part of that through thick and thin.

Derrick White will forever have blown through every ceiling anyone ever set for him, and maybe get a shiny new tooth for his troubles. Jrue Holiday will go down as one of the premier winners in the modern NBA, and might just make the Hall of Fame for it with his second ring.

Payton Pritchard will forever be the man who took the roof off of TD Garden with the single most electric shot I’ve ever seen. The Ringer’s Bill Simmons and his father recorded a podcast after the game, and the latter said the Garden was louder than Larry Bird’s famous game-clinching steal against the Detroit Pistons. Simmons disagreed, but I’m not sure Pritchard really minds being the 1B or 1A with “Bird stole the inbounds pass!”

As far as I’m concerned, that’s my favorite single play I’ve ever seen live. I legitimately screamed in my apartment at 3:45 AM, so I hope I didn’t wake anybody up.

I will always remember Sam Hauser as the man whole clamped every single Mavericks perimeter player at least once, yet they wouldn’t stop trying to go after him. His eight points were huge, and I’ll make sure no one forgets about them.

The Mazzulla legacy conversation is now officially on, and the winningest, youngest, and most pop-culture-driven coach in NBA history now has a ring in his second season. The future is limitless.

And last, but certainly not least—there are no leasts on this team—Mike Gorman’s final season had the perfect fairy tale ending. The voice of the team can enjoy his retirement without worrying if he truly left it all out on the court and at the booth. He did.

This is the immortality I was talking about. These guys will have this for the rest of their lives, and they’ll have each other forever, too. That’s why championships are so special. Guys like Leon Powe and Eddie House might have never met in an alternate world, but they’re bonded forever by what they helped each other achieve.

And lastly, there’s me. Listen, I know it’s not the best photo, but I don’t take that many photos of myself. I’m a writer, not a model.

I don’t remember the 2008 championship. I was five years old, and while I wish I could say I had some glimpses or flashes of the parade or my parents celebrating, I don’t. For me, 2008 never happened.

That’s why I wanted this so bad. I’m the first generation who has no recollection of ‘08, and the Celtics were the last Boston sports team that hadn’t won a championship in my memory.

This was my first year writing for the world to read. By pulling all the thoughts out of my head and putting them on paper, I figured out how much this team meant to me, and last year I got a crash course in how to freak out about NBA games publicly as I published my various mental breakdowns during the Eastern Conference Finals. By the end, I decided that this was what I want to do with my life.

I’d love to say that I knew that already, that this team was simply the catalyst for something that was already there. But they may be more directly involved in that decision than I realize, and had the Celtics been a mediocre Play-In team that was just happy to make the playoffs, who knows if I would have stuck with it?

Now seems like a good time to say thank you to everyone who supported me and pushed me forward this year, to everyone who loves my work and everyone who hates it. It’s all part of what makes this so special to me. Thank you in particular to Jeff, Bill, everyone else at CelticsBlog, and those who pointed me in the right direction when I didn’t know where to turn.

I may not write about basketball forever. Maybe I will, but I think it’s fine to have phases in our lives that are distinct from each other. My 8th grade math teacher told me that. But right now this is what I’m doing and want to keep doing. I love this team, and I love writing about them. And they’ve given me all the inspiration I could ever ask for.

I guess I don’t know what the Celtics winning their 18th championship means to me yet. There’s something deeper to it, beyond the simple elation that almost had me passed out on my cold hardwood floor at 5:00 AM this morning. It feels like it might be really, truly important to me and my understanding of myself. So to respect that, I won’t try to make anything up.

What I do know is I’ll remember this Celtics team and these guys forever. No matter what happens in my life, personal or professional, in the world around me, below me or above me, I’ll still have these guys. This team’s character was already beautiful, but now we all have a photo, framed by history.

When I talked about immortality, this is what I meant. This team isn’t going to last forever on the court, but now it’s officially part of the NBA story. It’s a cruel world, and those who fall short are either forgotten or remembered for what could have been rather than what was. But history doesn’t forget the winners.

Maybe almost nobody here in Germany knows right now, but that’s the beauty of an immortal accomplishment. One day, my roommate Sebastian will come across an article mentioning the “Gewinner der NBA Finals 2024” and he’ll see that it’s the Boston Celtics. It could be tomorrow, or it could be in 15 years when he’s moved to Düsseldorf and opened up a chic, steampunk-themed coffee shop in a discontinued rail car with his wife and business partner. This moment will last forever, and I think that’s pretty cool.