The Boston Celtics won their 18th NBA championship on Monday, defeating the Dallas Mavericks 106-88 to win the series 4-1.
With the win, the Celtics broke a tie with the Los Angeles Lakers for the most NBA championships in league history.
The big picture: Jayson Tatum had 31 points, 11 assists and eight rebounds in the championship game, while Jaylen Brown added 21 points, eight rebounds, and six assists. Brown was voted the NBA Finals MVP.
- The Celtics earned their latest title on the 16th anniversary of hoisting their last Larry O’Brien Trophy in 2008.
- Boston went 16-3 in the postseason and finished with an 80-21 overall record, with a winning percentage of .792, the second-best in team history.
Go deeper: Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla, at age 35, became the youngest coach since Bill Russell in 1969 to lead a team to a championship.
- Dallas’s Luka Doncic finished with 28 points and 12 rebounds, but the Mavericks failed to extend the series after avoiding a sweep in Game 4.
- Boston never trailed in the championship game, leading by as many as 26 points and feeding off the energy of the Garden crowd.
- Tatum and Brown, who joined the Celtics team in 2016 and 2017, respectively, led a Celtics team that relied on taking and making a high number of 3-pointers and a defense that was the league’s best during the regular season.
- The Celtics duo made it to at least the Eastern Conference finals as teammates four previous times and finally reached the finish line in their fifth deep playoff run together.
