Celtics win 18th NBA championship with 106-88 Game 5 win over Dallas Mavericks

BOSTON (AP) — Jayson Tatum put his hands behind his head with TD Garden fans standing and cheering around him and took it all in.

Walking to the bench, he wrapped 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 topped the Dallas Mavericks 106-88 on Monday night to win the franchise’s 18th championship, breaking a tie with the Los Angeles Lakers for the most in league history.

Boston won its most recent title on the 16th anniversary of hoisting the last Larry O’Brien trophy in 2008. It marks the 13th championship won this century by one of the city’s four major professional sports franchises.

“It means the world,” Tatum said onstage after the team received the trophy from NBA commissioner Adam Silver. “It’s been a long time. And damn am I grateful.”

Jaylen Brown added 21 points, eight rebounds and six assists and was voted NBA Finals MVP.

“I share it with my brothers and my partner in crime, Jayson Tatum,” Brown said after his and Tatum’s 107th career playoff game — the most of any duo before winning a title.

Jrue Holiday finished with 15 points and 11 rebounds. Center Kristaps Porzingis also provided an emotional lift, returning from a two-game absence with a dislocated tendon in his left ankle to rattle off five points in 17 minutes.

They helped the Celtics complete a postseason that saw them go 16-3 and finish with an overall record of 80-21. That .792 winning percentage ranks second in team history behind only the 1985-86 championship Celtics, who 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.

“You get very few chances in life to be great,” Mazzulla said.

Luka Doncic finished with 28 points and 12 rebounds for Dallas, which failed to extend the streak after avoiding a sweep with a 38-point victory in Game 4. The Mavericks had been 3-0 in Game 5s this postseason, with Doncic scoring at least. 31 points in each of them. He said the chest, right knee and left ankle injuries he played through in the Finals were no excuse as Dallas battled throughout the series.

“It doesn’t matter if I was hurt, how much I was hurt. I’ve been there,” he said. “I tried to play, but I didn’t do enough.”

Kyrie Irving finished with just 15 points on 5-of-16 shooting and lost 13 of the last 14 meetings against the Celtics team he left in the summer of 2019 to join the Brooklyn Nets.

Irving believes better things are ahead for the Mavs.

“I see an opportunity for us to really build our future in a positive way, where this is almost like business as usual for us and we’re competing for championships,” he said.

NBA teams are now 0-157 in postseason series after falling from a 3-0 deficit.

Mavs coach Jason Kidd believes Doncic and his team will grow from this NBA Finals experience.

“I think the first step is just being in it. I think it’s a big thing,” he said. “Yeah, we were down 4-1, but I thought the group battled with the Celtics and just unfortunately we couldn’t make shots when we needed to, or we turned the ball over and they took full advantage of that.”

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 a combined eight points from Tatum and Brown.

The Celtics did it again in the second quarter as 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 a buzzer-beater by Payton Pritchard – his second such shot of the series – to give Boston a 67-46 lead at halftime.

In the final two minutes of the first and second quarters, the Celtics outscored the Mavericks 22-4.

The Celtics never looked back.

Russell’s widow, Jeannine Russell, and his daughter Karen Russell were at TD Garden to welcome the newest 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 earned Boston the draft picks it eventually used to select Brown and Tatum third overall in back-to-back drafts in 2016 and 2017.

The All-Stars came into their own this season, leading a Celtics team that was built around shooting and making a lot of 3-pointers and a defense that was rated as the league’s best this season regular.

The duo has reached at least the Eastern Conference Finals as teammates four times previously.

They finally reached the finish line in their fifth deep playoff run together.

After both struggled offensively at times in the series, Tatum and Brown hit a groove in Game 5, combining for 31 points and 11 assists in the first half.

It helped bring out all the attributes that have made Boston the most formidable team in the NBA this postseason — spreading teams out, sharing the ball and wreaking havoc on defense. And even chipping a tooth, like Derrick White did after being landed by Dereck Lively II.

“I’ll lose all my teeth for a championship,” White said.

And it put a championship tilt into a dizzying stretch for the Celtics, which saw them lose in the Finals to the Golden State Warriors in 2022 and then fail to come back last season after a Game 7 home loss to the Miami Heat in the conference finals.

Tatum vowed that night to erase the sting of those disappointments.

Standing in a sea of ​​confetti Monday night, his 6-year-old son, Deuce, reminded him of what he accomplished.

“He told me I was the best in the world,” Tatum said. “I said, ‘You’re damn right I am.’

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AP NBA: https://apnews.com/hub/nba

Kyle Hightower, Associated Press