Big day at the TD Garden in Boston. This Monday, the Celtics have the opportunity to win their first championship ring at home since the 2008 final against Kobe Bryant and Pau Gasol’s Lakers. They lead Luka Dončić’s Dallas Mavericks 3-1 and, despite the beating suffered in the fourth game, they are the clear favorites. Never in the 156 occasions in which a team that has started a seven-game NBA playoffs or final 3-0 has it let it slip away. If the team led by Joe Mazzulla wins tonight, it will also achieve a historic tiebreaker against the Lakers, since both teams accumulate 17 championship trophies in their cabinets, although those from Boston accumulate more dust. The Celtics face the Mavericks, but they are also measured against their history.
The superiority shown by the Celtics in the first three games of the final was blown up in the fourth. What raises doubts is not so much the defeat, but the way in which it occurred, with a difference of 38 points on the scoreboard (122-84) that reached 48 during the game. Mazzulla says that football, and in particular the Manchester City of Spanish Pep Guardiola, helped him understand that the game is connected, that it is not a sum of attack and defense, but that one conditions the other. The thesis was demonstrated on Friday, when the Celtics foundered on both rims and in the transition from one to the other.
Those from Boston wasted the opportunity at the American Airlines Center to become the first team to sweep their rivals 4-0 in both the Conference and NBA finals. They were soundly defeated, with the game decided shortly after the start of the second half, after a superb performance by Luka Dončić, who scored 25 points before the break. The Mavericks pressed, stole balls, fought every play, took the divided balls, captured many more rebounds, shot more successfully and became masters of the hoops, with an imposing Dereck Lively II, a rookie who does not look like one, who managed 11 points and 12 rebounds in 22 minutes. In goals from inside the zone, the locals won 60-27 against the Celtics who undoubtedly missed their starting center, Kristaps Porziņģis, who was injured.
For the Mavericks it was a life or death duel and they faced it as such. In the subconscious of those in Boston perhaps there was the idea that the finals had already been decided, that winning the title at home would be more tremendous and that, ultimately, it was not so serious to lose. Only Jayson Tatum was spared – and only during the first quarter – from the team’s general debacle. Jaylen Brown, favorite to be chosen as the best player of the finals, was missing; Derrick White showed the worst version of him; Jrue Holiday did not work either in defense or attack, and Al Horford was charged with fouls too quickly, powerless to stop the entries of Dončić and Kyrie Irving and to challenge Dereck Lively II for rebounds.
Although the fourth game is forever recorded as one of the biggest defeats in the NBA finals, it will only be an anecdote if those from Boston arrive on time this Monday for their date with history. Both the Celtics and the Lakers (the latter first in Minnesota and then in Los Angeles) have 17 NBA championship titles. However, since Larry Bird’s third ring, in 1986, the Celtics have only won the 2008 trophy, while their eternal rivals have won eight.
The last missed opportunity was two years ago, when Stephen Curry’s Golden State Warriors won the title in Game 6 of the series at TD Garden. The backbone of that team remains, with Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown, Derrick White and Al Horford, plus substitutes Sam Hauser, Payton Pritchard and Luke Kornet. Tatum, Brown and White are in their best moment and Horford remains in surprisingly good shape at 38 years old, but two key pieces have also been added to the team this season: Jrue Holiday, who has strengthened the defense and was already a champion with the Bucks, and Kristaps Porziņģis, who when injuries allow it gives the Celtics’ game power under the rims and versatility in attack. The Celtics have been the best in the regular season and in the playoffs.
Joe Mazzulla, the coach who came to lead the team almost by accident (he was the third coach: the second went to another team and the first was fired for a relationship with a club employee), was asked this Sunday about that opportunity to join the legendary coaches who were champions, such as the legendary Red Auerbach (nine titles in 10 seasons: 1957 and 1959-1966), and the no less legendary Bill Russell and KC Jones (who before becoming coaches won titles in spades also as players). Mazzulla, 35, the youngest to reach a final in the entire NBA since Russell, has gone off on a tangent: “That will never happen if you don’t run back on defense, rebound, execute and occupy your space. That is the most important thing”, he responded with that dryness that sometimes makes him seem unfriendly. Deeply religious, he later corrected himself: “Christ is the most important thing before all that.”
Mazzulla has faith in victory. He believes that beyond the tactical adjustments, willpower and the team’s mentality will be key. The coach shows the players nature videos to feed his killer instinct. They have a golden opportunity this Monday to kill the final. To do this, it will be important to impose your game. “The team that dictates the pace, dictates the course and the opportunities,” he said this Sunday. “Each game has its own life. There are things that we can control and others that we have to be prepared to adapt to depending on how the game goes,” he added.
For the Mavericks, the game is once again a matter of life or death. “We are going to believe until the end,” said their star, Luka Dončić, after Friday’s victory. And he reiterated the idea this Sunday. “The most important thing is to show that we believe. It’s easy to say, but proving it is something else. I think we showed it in the fourth game.” According to the Slovenian guard, the need to win was what allowed the Mavericks to change in the fourth game after not having played well in the first three games. Dončić will need the entire team to respond again. In particular, eyes will be on Kyrie Irving, Celtics fans’ number one enemy after his disappointing time with the team. In Boston’s first two games he was not up to par. The local media joked: Kyrie Irving finally brings joy to the Celtics.
Dončić was watching Slovenia’s soccer game in the Euro Cup this Sunday (1-1 against Denmark) and they asked him if the Celtics, with their 17 titles behind them, were not a bit like Real Madrid, where he played, to basketball. before making the jump to the NBA, to football: “I would say that Real Madrid is in its own league. They are at the top of Europe. But Boston, Lakers, are obviously the top two NBA teams in the league and have been since day one. So it’s obviously a little bit comparable,” he replied.
Real Madrid has won 14 of its 17 European Cup finals. The Celtics, 17 of their 22 NBA Finals. This Monday they want to win the 18th.
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