Boston Reaches the Brink of a Title in the Most Celtics Way Possible

The Boston Celtics can only ever be themselves: the best team in the NBA, but waylaid by maddening flaws. Producers of the most efficient offense in NBA history, but capable of confounding stagnation. A true team, replete with both stars and depth, but without the top-end MVP candidate who typically leads a championship squad.

Every bit of Boston’s complicated profile emerged in Dallas on Wednesday night, as the visiting Celtics held off the Mavericks 106-99 to take a 3-0 lead in the Finals. In quintessential Celtics fashion, Game 3 featured stretches of dominance next to stretches of torpor and a near collapse in the fourth quarter after Boston had taken a 21-point lead. Boston even benefited from the absence of an opposing star player, as it has throughout its postseason romp, when Luka Doncic fouled out in crunch time.

But the most obvious way that Game 3 fit Boston’s season-long pattern came on the final scoreboard: The Celtics won, to push their overall record this season to a ridiculous 79-20 and bring them to the brink of a championship.

Let us count the ways that Game 3 encapsulated the 2023-24 Celtics experience, starting with their apparent ability to toggle between all the way on and all the way off with little rhyme or reason. Boston started slow on Wednesday—unsurprisingly, perhaps, given the Mavericks’ desperation in front of their home crowd. For all intents and purposes, Dallas needed to win Game 3 to keep the Finals alive; famously, no NBA team has ever overcome a 3-0 deficit to win a playoff series.

The Mavericks opened this must-win game with a passion, and everything went their way early on. Kyrie Irving’s jump shot finally showed up, the home crowd roared, and little-used Celtics reserve Xavier Tillman was getting minutes in lieu of the injured Kristaps Porzingis. The Mavericks led 25-12 midway through the first quarter, and the series looked not just competitive again, but—with Porzingis’s availability in doubt—potentially winnable.

Then Boston flipped the switch on and held it there for roughly two and a half quarters. The Celtics ate into Dallas’s lead quickly and trailed by only a single point both at the end of the first quarter and at halftime. They broke it open in the third quarter, when they made their first seven shots and outscored Dallas 35-19; toss in a pair of 3-pointers in the first minute of the fourth quarter, and Boston was all of a sudden ahead by 21 points, cruising to a 3-0 lead.

Then the switch turned off again. A 22-2 Dallas run brought the Mavericks all the way back to within a point—but despite hesitant offensive possessions and a lack of momentum, Boston never fully surrendered its lead. Jaylen Brown scored on a putback to stop Dallas’s run, Jrue Holiday found Derrick White for a massive 3-pointer, and Brown nailed a pull-up jumper for the dagger with a minute left.

This, too, is a defining trait of the 2023-24 Celtics: It might not be pretty, but they consistently win close games. In clutch situations in the regular season, Boston finished with a 21-12 record and a plus-15 net rating; in clutch situations in the playoffs, they’re now a perfect 6-0 with a plus-47 net rating. Plus-47!

Most controversially, the Celtics benefited in the clutch in Game 3 from the absence of Doncic, who fouled out—on a close whistle, while foolishly trying to take a charge with five fouls, after committing foolish fouls earlier in the game—with 4:12 remaining. Here lies another manifestation of the Celtics’ entire playoff journey: While Doncic left the game because of fouls, not injury, Boston was able to close yet another playoff contest without facing its opponent’s best creator, after avoiding Jimmy Butler, Donovan Mitchell, and Tyrese Haliburton for all or parts of the first three rounds.

Give the Celtics credit here, however: They can beat only the players in front of them, and they’re dealing with their own crucial absence. Porzingis missed 10 games earlier in the postseason—Boston won nine of them—and might miss the rest of the Finals after suffering a lower leg injury in Game 2. But the Celtics have enough other contributors to withstand the absence of their best big man, and that depth was on display once more in Game 3.

Filling in for Porzingis, Tillman made his first 3-pointer of the entire playoffs and was plus-9 in 11 minutes. And fellow reserve Sam Hauser was an even better plus-16 in 14 minutes, as the sharpshooter made a trio of 3-pointers to help Boston steady the ship during Dallas’s hot start.

Those 3-pointers have been a feature of coach Joe Mazzulla’s offensive game plan all season long. In Game 3, more than half of Boston’s shot attempts came from distance, and the Celtics made eight more 3s than the Mavericks. Through three games, Boston has nearly doubled Dallas’s 3-point total and has attempted 49 more 3s even though Dallas ranked second in 3-point attempts in the regular season. (Boston, of course, ranked first.)

3-Point Makes in the Finals

That comparison speaks not only to Boston’s offensive approach, but also to the Celtics’ defensive mastery, as the NBA’s second-rated defense continues to prevent Dallas from getting to the spots it wants. Though the Mavericks started and ended hot on Wednesday, they still ended the game with only 99 points—their third straight game failing to crack triple digits.

Doncic scored 27 points (albeit on 27 shots), and Irving enjoyed by far his best game of the Finals, tallying 35 to lead all scorers. But once again, Boston mostly shut down the Mavericks’ role players, even as Jason Kidd practically emptied his bench—playing 11 players in the first half of a Finals game is incredible—to try to find any solution to crack the Celtics’ code.

Through the first two games of the Finals, Boston had lost the battle of the leading stars but prevailed because of its superior depth, but that formula twisted somewhat in Game 3. Brown and Jayson Tatum combined for 61 points—31 from Tatum and 30 for Brown—to Luka and Irving’s 62, and no other Celtic scored more than Derrick White’s 16.

Tatum in particular displayed his simultaneous strengths and weaknesses as a leading man in Game 3. On the one hand, he was a much better scorer in Dallas as he rediscovered the shooting stroke that had abandoned him in the first two games in Boston. He’s a first-team All-NBA standout for a reason. But on the other hand, even as he seemingly scored at will when he used his strength to drive to the rim, Tatum also settled for far too many isolation 3-pointers; he finished 4-for-13 on 3s and 7-for-13 on 2-pointers. With the score close in the final minutes, he resorted to a 28-foot stepback to try—and fail—to put the game away.

Yet the fact that Tatum is merely the sixth-or-so-best player in the NBA, rather than in the “best in the world” conversation like most championship leaders, doesn’t matter when the end result is this strong. With another win in Dallas in Friday’s Game 4, Boston would become only the 10th team in NBA history to sweep the Finals, joining the:

• 2018 Warriors over Cavaliers
• 2007 Spurs over Cavaliers
• 2002 Lakers over Nets
• 1995 Rockets over Magic
• 1989 Pistons over Lakers
• 1983 76ers over Lakers
• 1975 Warriors over Bullets
• 1971 Bucks over Bullets
• 1959 Celtics over Lakers

Boston could become only the fourth Finals sweeper this century; this is rarefied air. It could also finish the postseason with a 16-2 record. Only two other teams this century have won the title with so few playoff losses, and they double as two of the greatest in league history: the 2017 Warriors (16-1) and 2001 Lakers (15-1).

These Celtics might not end up on the same historical tier as those dominant dynastic winners because of all the flaws and foibles that keep so many of their wins interesting until the final buzzer. But let’s save a look at their lasting legacy for after these Finals are over, and after Tatum, Brown, and all their worthy teammates have raised the Larry O’Brien Trophy at last. For now, it’s simply enough that the Celtics win, and win, and keep on winning. They haven’t lost a game in more than a month! For all the mysteries of this team’s identity, that irrepressible success is the most important element.