Remade Celtics ready for a new ending after sweeping Indiana
• The gleaming silver and gold Larry Bird Trophy looked like a chalice in Jaylen Brown’s left hand.
When Brown was announced as the Eastern Conference final MVP and the adoring Boston Celtics fans who now filled the lower bowl of Gainbridge Fieldhouse roared in approval, Brown didn’t need both mitts to raise that little thing, which looks like a replica of the trophy named after another important Larry. Still, Brown grabbed it near its cylindrical base, sideways, holding it high while teammates palmed his head and slapped him silly.
Consider it practice. Just a trial run celebration before the real thing, following their four-game sweep over the Indiana Pacers on Monday night. Because come the sixth of June, top-seeded Boston will return to its second NBA Finals in three years, and Brown and his mates would much rather close that series by dancing in a champagne-soaked mosh pit and raising the league’s ultimate prize, which measures 25.5 inches and weighs 29 pounds.
For now, Brown seemed happy with his latest keepsake. Following Boston’s 105-102 win to close out the series, Brown carried his tiny souvenir when he sat down to speak with reporters, resting it atop a stat sheet that showed how he had recorded a game-high 29 points, along with six rebounds and three steals. With his newest award close by, Brown distanced himself, and his team, from former days.
“I know everybody wants to continue to pigeonhole us to what has happened in the past ...” he said.
That recent history reads like a script for a basketball soap opera. In 2021, Brad Stevens, who had coached the Celtics to a conference final appearance one year earlier, waved goodbye to the sideline so that he could take over the team’s basketball operations. By 2022, firstyear head coach Ime Udoka had transitioned to the main seat and led the Celtics to the Finals, where they were bullied by Golden State. Then, after Boston suspended Udoka for the entire 2022-23 season due to an improper relationship with a female staffer, another first-timer in Joe Mazzulla took over. Success continued, all the way into another conference finals, until the eighth-seeded Miami Heat shocked Boston on its home floor in Game 7.
During this winning stretch, Boston has endured more tumult than you might expect from a franchise tied for the most championship banners in league history, with the 17th coming after the 2007-08 season. The anchoring presence of two homegrown superstars, Brown and Jayson Tatum, has helped matters, and yet these Celtics have remained a game or two, or a series, short of winning the big prize. This June could be different, simply because so many other things have changed.
“We’ve had a different team every single year, different coaches. We’ve had like three coaches in the last five years,” Brown explained. “Still, people want to make it seem like it’s the same, it’s the same, it’s the same. Time has gone by, experience has been gained and I think we are ready to put our best foot forward.”
The road to this year’s Finals started last summer. Stevens and the front office made the difficult decision to part ways with Marcus Smart, the team’s heartbeat. The trade shifted the locker-room so that other players, particularly Brown, were determined to step in and fill the void in vocal leadership, and yet it also brought in a versatile big man in Kristaps Porzingis. Though Porzingis hasn’t played since the first round of the playoffs due to a calf injury, he averaged 20.1 points per game this season.
Just before the start of training camp, Boston traded Marcus Brogdon and Robert Williams III, a pair of key contributors, for Jrue Holiday’s defensive skills and championship presence. Through the conference final, Holiday posted post-season averages of 12.7 points, 5.6 rebounds and 4.6 assists. More importantly, he repeatedly showed his worth in the clutch, stripping the ball from Pacers guard Andrew Nembhard late in Game 3, then securing the final offensive rebound to secure Game 4.