Lowe: Here’s the code the Boston Celtics finally cracked to raise banner No. 18

THE GOOD NEWS for those who don’t quite know how to contextualize these Boston Celtics after a dominant-by-any-measure championship season: They will return more or less intact to make another run at it next season, with a chance to cement their place as one of the great teams of the modern era.

Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown are 26 and 27, respectively. Tatum has made first-team All-NBA in three straight seasons. Brown made third-team last season and barely missed this season. His steely postseason, crowned with Finals MVP, indicates he might have another level to hit. Boston might not have a traditional MVP centerpiece — Tatum finished sixth in the voting this season and has never finished above fourth — but if Brown’s ascent continues, they could boast two of the top 10 or 12 players over the next few seasons. Tatum might not have hit his ceiling either.

The core players around them, the threads connecting the Danny Ainge and Brad Stevens regimes, are all under contract for next season and in some cases beyond. Only Al Horford, the stalwart whose reacquisition marked the first salvo of the Stevens era, is old in NBA terms. There are what should be smooth extension talks coming for Tatum and Derrick White, and perhaps trickier ones surrounding Sam Hauser and Kristaps Porzingis (later in Porzingis’ case). The team will get ultra expensive. The second apron hems you in. But you live to get a team like this. You pay for it and figure out the rest later.

The NBA has not had a repeat champion since the Warriors in 2018. Even the Denver Nuggets, with the world’s best player, seemed to publicly downplay the importance of repeating — focusing instead on winning multiple titles over the next decade in San Antonio Spurs-esque fashion.

Boston should take the opposite approach. Chase the repeat. State it as its goal. Break the no-repeat stretch, and its historical standing becomes beyond dispute. If the Celtics stay healthy, they will have everything they need. They should enter next season as favorites.

THERE HAVE BEEN dominant regular-season teams that were a bit less dominant in postseason title runs. There have been dominant postseason teams that coasted through the regular season. The 2000-01 Lakers of Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant are the quintessential example. They went 15-1 in the playoffs and mauled opponents by 12.8 points per game — after going 56-26 with a plus-3.7 differential in the regular season.

Those Lakers gain historical steam because they three-peated, and the first of those three teams — the 1999-2000 version — had almost the inverse campaign of its successor: historically great regular season, difficult playoff road. It went 67-15 with a plus-8.5 margin and gutted out a 15-8 playoff record with a plus-2.3 margin.

These Celtics check every statistical benchmark. They went 64-18 and then 16-3 in the playoffs. They piled up huge scoring margins in both segments: plus-11.3 in the regular season, plus-8.0 in the playoffs. The latter figure was above 10 before their 38-point drubbing in Game 4.

Even so, the record and point differential together put Boston in rare air. The only weak spot is in their slate of postseason opponents, perhaps the overall state of the East, and in the vague feeling that they were or at least seemed more vulnerable than the NBA’s historic titans: that their offense was prone to aimlessness at inopportune times, in part because they might not (yet) boast any one superstar at the level of the immortals who usually helm title teams.

Some of that was the collective NBA hive mind conflating the painful exits of past Celtics teams with what this reinvented bunch was doing right before our eyes. The Celtics cannot help that their East playoff opponents were beset by ill-timed injuries, or that the alleged giants of the East wilted early amid injuries to Joel Embiid and Giannis Antetokounmpo.

It should not be glossed over that Boston played 12 of 19 playoff games without Porzingis. His 59 joyous Finals minutes were a reminder of the higher gear Boston hit when fully formed.

The Celtics just became the seventh team since the NBA-ABA merger to claim the title after winning at least 55 games and outscoring regular-season opponents by 10-plus points per game, according to Basketball-Reference. The six previous teams to hit that statistical triple: three Michael Jordan Chicago Bulls teams (1991-92, 1995-96, 1996-97), the first Stephen Curry-era Golden State Warriors title team (2014-15), the first Curry/Kevin Durant Warriors team (2016-17) and, remarkably, the 2007-08 Celtics.

Of those six teams above, only two — the 1995-96 Bulls and 2016-17 Warriors — had both a better playoff point differential than these Celtics and three or fewer postseason losses. The list of Tier 1 title teams obviously runs deeper than these seven.

Golden State in Durant’s second year there followed a fairly unremarkable 58-win regular season by going 16-5 with a plus-10 scoring margin in its repeat run. The 1996-97 Bulls won 69 games with a massive plus-10.8 differential and went 15-4 in the playoffs, outscoring postseason opponents by 5.5 points per game.

The 1985-86 Celtics, still considered the greatest modern Boston team, went 67-15 with a plus-9.4 scoring margin — barely under the 10-point threshold. They were 15-3 in the postseason and blitzed those opponents by 10.3 points — well above Boston’s final margin this season.

The Lakers of the following season — the gold standard of Showtime — went 65-17 with a plus-9.3 margin, ripped off that same 15-3 playoff record and obliterated postseason opponents by 11.4 points per game.

Other teams that fall short of some of these statistical criteria deserve a seat at the table based on the rivals they overcame.

The 2013-14 Spurs won 62 games and outscored postseason opponents by 9.3 points en route to a rollicking revenge stomping of the two-time defending champion Miami Heat. San Antonio went “only” 16-7 in those playoffs, with three of those losses coming in the first round.

The best Heat team of the LeBron James era — 2012-13 — won 66 regular-season games and gutted through a 16-7 playoff run, needing the full seven games in the Finals and one Ray Allen miracle to upend the Spurs. Those Heat were plus-7.9 in the regular season and plus-6.4 in the playoffs — very strong numbers. They also had arguably the greatest player ever at his apex.

The Heat and Spurs had to go through each other, just as the 1980s Celtics and Lakers battled. Miami achieved a repeat.

The first Bad Boys Detroit Pistons title team went 63-19, outscoring opponents by almost six points per game, and followed with a rampaging postseason: 15-2, plus-7.7. That is one fewer loss than Boston this year, with almost the same point differential. Detroit extinguished the embers of past dynasties in Boston and Los Angeles, and held off the all-timer that was forming in Chicago.

The 1982-83 Philadelphia 76ers swept the Lakers in the Finals and brushed aside the team that swept the Celtics (the Milwaukee Bucks) — ending the playoffs 12-1 with a plus-6.5 differential. The Fo-Fo-Fo Sixers won more regular-season games than this season’s Celtics — 65 — with a fat plus-7.7 margin

The Spurs played to a 60-win pace in the lockout-shortened 1998-99 season, went 15-2 in the playoffs and put up huge scoring margins. Scanning before the merger ropes in a few more all-time teams.

In chatting with coaches and executives before the Game 4 loss to Dallas, the closest thing to a consensus was that the Celtics indeed stand as a truly great single-season team but that it felt exuberant even before that Game 4 loss to place them in the most hallowed tier alongside the 1990s Bulls; 2017 and 2018 Warriors; 1986 Celtics; 1987 Lakers; the three-peat Lakers of Shaq and Kobe; maybe a few others.

Their statistical edge on the next tier of champions — including several teams listed above — now rests mostly on regular-season point differential. They compiled some of that against a weak Eastern Conference. Had they lost Game 4 against the Mavs by a normal margin — say 10 or 12 points — their playoff point differential would hover near the very top. Now it’s less special. That one game warped their postseason numbers that much.

How much should we weigh that game, given Boston was up 3-0 and won in five? You can’t dismiss it. It was a bad loss. But blowing away the Mavs again 106-88 in Game 5 transforms it into an outlier amid a postseason romp.

In the end, these Celtics — 64 wins, all-time regular-season point differential, strong 16-3 playoffs — can go toe-to-toe with anyone in this second tier of great modern champions. Some might prefer the 1989 Pistons or 2015 Warriors — among the closest doppelgangers — but Boston boosters can marshal some pretty strong statistical evidence for their own case. The mid-2010s Heat and Spurs and 1983 Sixers have compelling arguments too. It’s blurry in this glorious range.

This murkier placement seems pretty fair given the competition the Celtics have faced — again, not their fault! The East fell apart around them. Neither conference supplied a seasoned champion for them to vanquish.

The path to a repeat could be much thornier. It took a long time for the Celtics of Tatum and Brown to reach the top. Now they get to try to stay there.

IT IS A testament to how strange the team-building process can be — how every team needs luck — that only one player in Boston’s postseason rotation was selected with an original Celtics pick: Payton Pritchard.

The Celtics’ journey here started on draft night in 2013, when they traded Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett to the Brooklyn Nets for a series of unprotected picks and swaps that eventually netted both Tatum and Brown. On that same night, the Sixers traded Jrue Holiday to kick off The Process. A decade later, another spasm of trades ended with Holiday as the final piece in Boston — just as he once was in Milwaukee.

There are alternative universes in which Boston trades one of Tatum and Brown — or the picks that became them — to speed up their process and challenge LeBron James’ hegemony in the late 2010s East. They had talks surrounding Paul George, Jimmy Butler, Kawhi Leonard, Anthony Davis and Kevin Durant. Their godfather offer to the Charlotte Hornets for the No. 9 pick in 2015 — with an eye on Justise Winslow — included one future Nets pick, per league sources.

They never agreed to any such deal — wagering in the end on continuity, on Brown and Tatum keeping a title window open for a half-decade or longer. (On the night they drafted Tatum No. 3 in 2017, Boston tried to acquire a second lottery pick in hopes of selecting Donovan Mitchell, league sources said. After the draft, they engaged Utah in talks for Mitchell — which Utah rebuffed, sources said.)

Tatum is a very good playmaking wing, but he has never averaged more than 4.9 assists. (He has exceeded that in playoff runs — including averaging 6.3 dimes this postseason.) Brown has never averaged more than 3.6 assists.

This is part of what people hint at when they argue Boston does not have any one offensive player on the level you typically see atop all-time teams: the absence of any “A” playmaker. White and Holiday are hybrid guards. Holiday has topped seven dimes in several seasons, but he has always been best as a secondary ball handler.

Player by player, Ainge and Stevens built a unique team constructed to mitigate that weakness — with strengths that would ultimately render it meaningless. Coach Joe Mazzulla, a fearless tinkerer, leaned further into those strengths than most coaches might.

The Celtics are not the first team to try putting five shooters on the floor. Enough others have attempted it that coaches and executives discovered a potential weakness: minimal rim pressure. A lot of five-out lineups lacked the archetypal rim-running center or any reliable means of playing inside-out basketball.

Some five-out offenses devolved into like-sized players pinging the ball around the perimeter as like-sized defenders switched everything and kept the ball out of the paint. Other five-out groupings were soft on defense.

Robert Williams III was the last player standing between Boston and semipermanent five-out play — the rim-runner, the lob threat, the shot-blocker.

The Celtics acquired Porzingis to usurp Williams’ starting spot, and then included Williams in the Holiday trade. The Celtics might not have been sure of it then, but they had cracked the code of five-out basketball — a code imitators will now chase.

On paper, the Celtics do not appear to make much use of the paint. They don’t get to the rim or the foul line much. They are an average offensive rebounding team. They lead the league in 3s by a mile. But volume is one ingredient in Boston cracking that code. If you are going to play this way, you have to really do it. Every starter and hopefully everyone in the rotation has to be a volume shooter. If the NBA is a variance game now, put yourself in position to win it.

But the way Boston generates those 3s is what stands out. The Celtics’ starting five is huge and physical. White and Holiday are 6-4, but they play much bigger; Holiday routinely bullies larger players.

Both are willing screeners. Opponents stash their smallest or weakest defenders on one of them — meaning White or Holiday can drag that defender toward Tatum and Brown by setting screens for them. Tatum and Brown are classic apex wings — burrowing drivers who make tough midrange shots.

Those four players use the screen, the pass and the drive to penetrate the defense — and then kick the ball out for the best 3s: open catch-and-shoot looks. Boston’s pristine spacing makes the passing reads easier. The floor is uncluttered, every passing lane vast. Boston has a bunch of good passers, screeners and cutters operating in wide-open spaces. That can work just as well as having one A-plus orchestrator. Boston might not have an MVP-level superstar — Tatum is close — but having five top-40-ish players within this ecosystem amounts to the same or more.

Marcus Smart was a vital Celtic, but White and Holiday are snappier read-and-react players. Both are better shooters than Smart. They settled into clear supporting roles behind Tatum and Brown. Smart often played more as their equal. The floor and the hierarchy are clearer now. Tatum and Brown get off the ball more willingly — confident they will get it back if the game dictates they should.

Porzingis added the final touch — another method of puncturing the paint when defenses switched: mashing smaller defenders on post-ups.

Everything crescendoed in the third quarter of Game 3 — the quarter that effectively cinched the championship. The Celtics tore the Mavs apart from every area — with Brown and Tatum often assisting each other:

That last play has echoes of Dwyane Wade and LeBron James finding each other on cuts against the Indiana Pacers a dozen years ago in their first title run together. Brown and Tatum had seven assists to each other in Game 3, tied for their highest total in any game, per ESPN Stats & Information. What a fitting capstone.

The other end of that equation was Boston’s defense taking away the same kinds of 3s its offense was creating. The Celtics’ collective size allows them to switch without getting ensnared in mismatches — to wall off the paint and stay home on shooters.

Their wings are versatile enough for Boston to play with matchups — including slotting Tatum on the Mavs’ centers, with Horford and Porzingis cross-matched on other players. That gambit muddied Doncic’s pick-and-roll game and vaporized the Mavs’ alley-oop attack.

Boston’s best offensive players are very good defenders. That is rare even among elite teams. The Celtics do not have to compromise on one end to lift the other — ever.

Mazzulla often reminds the media the two ends are connected. That shows up most in transition. The Celtics’ defense catapults them into the open floor, where they feast on 3s. Their spacing on offense — the number of guys spotting up around the arc — puts them in ideal position to retreat on defense.

Boston figured out five-out basketball like no team has before. The Celtics demolished the league and carved out a place in modern basketball history. Where exactly? Let’s see what the future holds.