BOSTON — The duality of that moment Monday night was impossible to miss for anyone in a shaken and excited TD Garden.
The warmth of Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown. The heat of Kyrie Irving was just as hot and powerful, but it felt different.
They stayed out of each other's way, just as Tatum and Brown refused to split up, and they refused to lose the dominance they had in this NBA Finals, clearly proving they are the better team and have risen to the ranks of the elite.
The Boston Celtics raised their flag in all their green glory after beating the heavily outclassed Dallas Mavericks in a crushing 106-88 victory in Game 5 of the NBA Finals.
The win broke a record tying them with the Los Angeles Lakers and was their 18th championship. This game was merely a coronation, but it was won on this night, in this building.
The smell of cheap champagne and cigars was inevitable on Monday night, but it was probably nauseating two years ago when Stephen Curry used the Celtics as a blank canvas to paint a masterpiece and beat them in Game 6 at the Garden.
Last year, following a humiliating loss to the eighth-seeded Miami Heat in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Finals, Boston rallied from a 3-0 deficit and threatened to make true history as the first team to complete such a comeback in the NBA.
It was almost poetic that the Celtics exorcised the demons in their stadium: demanding, unforgiving fans, whose faith in the team was matched by suffocating expectations, and who didn't think their two best players could even star, let alone play together.
But Tatum made up for his subpar shooting series with assists, rebounds and a 31-point, 11-assist and 8-rebound streak. Brown, who beat Tatum 7-4 to win the Finals MVP award, finished with 21 points, 6-assist and 8-rebound streak. Brown hounded an injured Luka Doncic all night, wearing him down and making him look back when no one else was around.
It was like a ghost was nearby.
Ghosts of the past are a common source of hope for the Celtics: Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce, whose departures to Brooklyn kicked off this night more than a decade ago.
There was Tatum and Brown in the locker room, Brown in Tatum's arms, Tatum splashing champagne on his teammates, jumping up and down like a middle schooler, finally letting out all those pent-up emotions.
Now they are the boogeyman, a standard that lives on in the dreams and nightmares of the Mavericks, who have learned just how long and how hard they have to play.
The Celtics were relentless and unwavering, even losing three games in the playoffs, and as always, it looked like the sky was falling.
Now they're living on a cloud. According to the whiteboard in the locker room, next up will be the white smoke and a trip to Miami.
“It feels surreal. It hasn't really sunk in yet,” Tatum said. “I guess I'm just trying to enjoy the moment. I kept saying, 'Wow.'”
“The last seven years have been a rollercoaster of ups and downs. I've had to listen to all the bad things people say about me, but tonight it was worth it. Oh my goodness.”
The normally reserved Tatum yelled and yelled multiple times, while Brown remained his usual self and laughed heartily.
“We've been through a lot, losses, expectations,” Brown said. “The media was saying all sorts of things, we can't play together, we'll never win.”
“We heard it all, but we forgot about it and just kept going. I trusted him, he trusted me, and we worked through it together.”
The unreliable duo became each other's motivators in moments of conflict, a relationship that endured precisely because they endured, a trait that seems necessary in today's NBA, despite a structure that demands constant change.
When Kevin Durant asked to leave Brooklyn (for the first time), the Celtics were on his list of potential destinations, and they would have to sacrifice Brown to make the deal happen.
There was nothing I could do, and it paid off.
“I think they knew what they had,” Jrue Holiday told Yahoo Sports, “They knew they had the gold medal, and it was just a matter of time before this situation happened where we get the rings and hopefully more than that.”
There are no guarantees, but if you look at recent championship teams, they all have in common organizational stubbornness, a set mentality, a commitment to a plan, and the ability to be flexible when the time comes. For the Denver Nuggets, it was making sure they had the right people around Nikola Jokic. For the Golden State Warriors, it was the belief that with Curry leading the team, with Klay Thompson and Draymond Green as pals, they could be a championship caliber team. For the Milwaukee Bucks, it was riding the relentless energy of Giannis Antetokounmpo, adding the right people at the right time in Holiday, and never succumbing to the calls for change.
The Celtics have a little bit of all of that in their DNA, even if they don't have that supernova-like, singular talent for erasing mistakes, but employing the best six-man rotation in the NBA has to mean something, and relying on the math today that says if you shoot more 3-pointers and defend at a higher level, you can run and hide the second your opponent slips is true.
“It all starts with these guys,” Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla said of his players. “You can't have a philosophy or a way of playing unless you have guys who are willing to embrace it and be disciplined. Honestly, these guys have been through a lot in the league, so they know what it takes.”
The obvious question was whether the Celtics, especially Tatum and Brown, knew what they needed: Could Tatum develop into an MVP-caliber player and Brown maximize at the same time? Honestly, the two needed to make room for each other and establish a pecking order while each player worked his way up the ladder.
Over the past few years, this franchise has been a Rubik's cube. They swapped point guards — Irving, Kemba Walker, Marcus Smart and now Holiday — before adding the oft-injured Kristaps Porzingis this season, knowing his medical record and how it got worse but good enough to endure it. They brought in Brad Stevens as coach, and then he went unexpectedly to the front office and hired Ime Udoka, who led the team to the Finals only to be fired a few months later for internal misconduct.
Then, just a few weeks before last season, a young Mazzulla stepped in to take his place, and let's not forget that Al Horford was the main man, then left, then came back and is now a capable center at age 37.
“There is no one more deserving of this award than Al,” Brown said. “He was a great leader not only on the court but off the court as well. A true mentor.”
“His performance throughout the season has been outstanding. Al is 37, 38 years old and we relied on him so much, maybe too much, given his age and where he is. He just delivers. So consistent, so athletic. He's never complained. You can tell. All he does is help win.”
Before Monday, Horford had played the most playoff games without winning a title, while Brown and Tatum were near the top of the questionable list of teammates with more playoff experience without winning a title.
The trail disappeared into a puff of white smoke. This photo of Tatum picking up his son, Deuce, and lifting him into the air will forever be a Tatum family photo.
“He told me I was the best in the world,” Tatum recalled. “I said, 'You're right.'”
It's a far cry from Garnett's “We can do anything!” rally from 16 years ago, but it will go down in legend. That team was born out of desperation and years of underachievement.
But the tough decisions came with realizing the team could no longer win championships, bringing to an end the franchise's greatest era since Larry Bird strode onto the court at the Garden.
When then-general manager Danny Ainge dealt Garnett and Pierce to Brooklyn, one of the things he received in return was draft capital to select Brown in 2016, then another draft-day steal landed Tatum a year later.
That means these two championship teams are closely tied, both business-wise and practically.
Tatum and Brown are forever connected, young enough to be scarred, yet old enough to experience what their idols go through.
“I just had to be relentless,” Tatum said. “Even though I overcame all this adversity, losing in the Finals and literally being at the lowest point of my career as a basketball player, I kept thinking, next year, the year after that, now is the time, and again, I just fell short.”
“And now, to elevate myself in a place where all of my favorite players are there, all of the players they consider greats and legends, all of the players I look up to have won championships, multiple times.
“So now I can walk into that room and be a part of it.”
The door is open and the Celtics plan to stick around for a while.
