It’s Way Past Time for these Celtics to Win a Title

Back in the NBA Finals for the second time in three seasons, Boston must win this time to avoid becoming history's greatest didn't-get-it-done team.

Jayson Tatum, Al Horford and Jaylen Brown have been the most significant members of the Boston Celtics during their current era of championship “almosts”. (Maddie Malhotra/Getty Images)

The Boston Celtics went into this season as NBA title favorites, and they haven’t disappointed yet. Boston punched its ticket to the Finals with a sweep of the Indiana Pacers on Monday night, advancing to the championship round for the second time in three years. No matter whether they face the Dallas Mavericks or Minnesota Timberwolves, Boston will be sizable favorites to win the title; my forecast model gives them more than a 70 percent chance to beat whomever comes out of the West.

And make no mistake: the pressure will rest heavily on the Celtics to finish that job. More than just a regular Finals favorite, Boston has to prevail in order to validate what has been a special season wire-to-wire. Moreover, this team is long overdue to win a championship after the past near-decade of deep-but-failed playoff runs. It may not quite be now-or-never territory, but the Celtics probably should have won already; now it’s well past time for them to take advantage of an opportunity like this.

Pending what happens in the 2024 Finals, only one team in NBA history has won more playoff games in an eight-year span without actually winning a title than these Celtics: the 1993-2000 New York Knicks, who won 64 postseason contests but could never get over the hump against Michael Jordan’s Bulls, Hakeem Olajuwon’s Rockets, Tim Duncan’s Spurs or Reggie Miller’s Pacers.

Technically, the 2017-2024 Celtics have won 73 times in eight years without a title. If they win four more, they’ll be off the list; anything less, and they’ll lead it by a mile. In other words, Boston must take the 2024 title to avoid becoming to most accomplished losers in league history.

Sure, there were always reasons why the Celtics fell short in the past. Early versions ran up again LeBron James and the Cavs when he was in the midst of his remarkable run of eight consecutive conference titles. Subsequent editions suffered key injuries, or lost their powers against the kryptonite Miami Heat. But this team also found a way to go 6-11 at home in the Eastern Conference finals, including dropping multiple Game 7s at TD Garden.

And in the one other time they went to the Finals, the 2022 Celtics actually looked better on paper than the Golden State Warriors, even coming within a second-half collapse of taking a 3-1 lead in that series. (I remember distinctly how crazy it sounded at the time to list the Warriors as underdogs, but everything that has transpired since for both teams makes it seem more like that really was the Celtics’ series to lose… and lose they did.)

Throughout almost the entire run, the central duo of Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown has been powering Boston’s chances — along with Al Horford as a crucial swiss-army big who can defend, rebound and stretch the floor with shooting.

Marcus Smart was also among that heart-and-soul core, until GM Brad Stevens painfully traded him away last offseason for Kristaps Porziņģis (who was great during the regular season, but hasn’t played in the playoffs since April 29 because of injury). A few more recent additions are working their way up the list of core Celtics during this run, including the indispensable Derrick White, ace shooter Payton Pritchard and Jrue Holiday — owner of maybe the Celtics’ clutchest steal since Larry Bird.

The 2024 roster is probably the best version of the Celtics during this stretch of playoff wins without a ring. Certainly, it posted the franchise’s best regular-season net rating of that period by far (+11.6 per 100 possessions), as well as its best in the playoffs (+10.9).

Still, there will be questions about whether Boston faced weak competition in the East, or if their victory over Indiana was convincing enough. (With an average margin of +6.8 PPG, it was the third-slimmest margin in a conference finals sweep¹ during the 16-team bracket era.) But if any Celtics team is poised to push the franchise past its recent trend of close-but-no-cigar, it’s this Boston squad.

And that’s good, because a win with Tatum, Brown, Horford and friends needs to happen now. We throw around the phrase “championship or bust” with a lot of teams — but seldom do we see a team like these Celtics, for whom a Finals win over the next handful of weeks is the only thing that can keep them from making one of the worst kinds of NBA history.

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Filed under: NBA

1. Only the 1989 Lakers versus the Suns (+5.5) and the 2023 Nuggets against the Lakers (+6.0) were less convincing sweeps.