For a record-setting 18th time in franchise history, the Boston Celtics are NBA champions.

Boston beat the Dallas Mavericks 106-88 in Game 5 of the NBA Finals to win the series and put an exclamation point on their domination of the NBA’s 78th season.

The top-seeded Celtics went 64-18 in the regular season, ensuring home-court advantage throughout the playoffs, and dropped only one game in the Finals.

With their Game 5 win, the Celtics broke a tie with the Los Angeles Lakers, the only other team in the league with 17 championship victories.

“It means the world,” All-NBA player Jayson Tatum said on stage after the Celtics received the Larry O’Brien Championship Trophy from NBA Commissioner Adam Silver. 

“It’s been a long time. And damn I’m grateful.”

The Celtics were coached to their first championship in 16 years by Joe Mazzulla, who at 35 is the youngest coach to win a title since Bill Russell won one as a player-coach for Boston in 1969.

“There’s nothing better than representing the Celtics,” Mazzulla said, “and being part of history.”

Mazzulla is in his second year at the helm. He originally took on the role of interim head coach just before the start of training camp in 2022, but his impressive success led the team to remove “interim” from his title later that season.

On the court, the dynamic duo of Tatum and Jaylen Brown led the way. Both All-Stars have played for the Celtics since they were drafted in 2017 and 2018, respectively.

Tatum, 26, had his best game of the NBA Finals in the series-clinching Game 5. He finished with a game-high 31 points and 11 assists, while also grabbing eight rebounds and coming away with two steals.

Brown, 27, was named NBA Finals MVP after he averaged 20.8 points, 5.4 rebounds, 5.0 assists and 1.6 steals per game in the series.

“I share this with my brothers and my partner in crime Jayson Tatum,” Brown said after the 107th career playoff game he and Tatum have played together — the most for any duo before winning a title.

After an up-and-down Game 3, in which they scored a combined 61 points, the two were seen hugging on the court. Brown later spoke about how special it was to win that game with his, “brother.”

Jrue Holiday, 34, played an important role in the series and particularly in Game 2, where he scored 26 points, 11 rebounds and his defensive efforts limited the production of Mavericks guard Kyrie Irving, a former Celtics All-Star. Game 3 was played on his birthday.

Celtics president of basketball operations Brad Stevens brought Holiday to Boston through a series of trades that shook things up after the 2022 Celtics came up short in the Finals and the team lost in the 2023 Eastern Conference Finals.

Al Horford, who became the first Dominican player to reach the NBA Finals when Boston reached the series in 2022, won his first NBA title in his second trip with the Celtics. The 38-year-old was drafted in 2007 out of Florida and played his first nine NBA seasons with the Atlanta Hawks before joining Boston for three years starting in 2016. He went to the Philadelphia 76ers and Oklahoma City Thunder before returning to Boston in 2021.

Kristaps Porzingis was unavailable to the Celtics through much of the playoffs, but he returned in Game 5 to help close out the series. The 7-foot-2 Latvian missed 10 playoff games with a right calf strain but returned for Game 1 and played a crucial role. Hopes were high for Game 2, but he suffered a “rare” injury in the third quarter when a tendon in his left leg dislocated after he tore the tissue that holds the tendon in place.

Other notable contributions from the Celtics included Payton Pritchard’s two half-court buzzer beaters in the series and a chasedown block by Derrick White in the final minute of the fourth quarter of Game 2.

White made another tremendous hustle play in Game 5, as he had his face inadvertently slammed into TD Garden’s parquet floor while diving for a loose ball and broke a tooth. Brown wound up getting the loose ball and made a layup on the other end of the floor to put the Celtics up by 15 points with less than 2:30 remaining in the second quarter.

The play kept Boston’s momentum rolling, and Pritchard swished a half-court heave at the halftime buzzer that gave the C’s a 67-46 heading into the locker room.

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Source: Tampa Bay Times