This was no surprise.
Boston heading to the NBA Finals was inevitable after they went up 3-0 in the Eastern Conference Finals. People have already started talking about how the Celtics and the Dallas Mavericks match up.
But no amount of inevitability can change what the moment means. For a team that has been grinding since October, after 96 games, the final buzzer to seal the Conference Finals unleashes all the emotions guys have been building up.
“Man, it was just overwhelming. Just a lot of joy,” Al Horford said. “Looking at my teammates, looking at everybody, I saw my wife there, my dad over in the crowd, just a lot. Just a lot.”
Horford, arms extended in celebration at , hugged whomever he could find. The floor quickly filled with players, coaches, and family members, all of them reveling in Boston’s return to the NBA Finals. Maybe if this were a movie, they would have done some cool, emotionless slow motion walk off the floor. But it’s not.
“You get to know these guys as people and you start to see how much they really care about doing anything and everything, what it takes to win,” Joe Mazzulla said. “You see how it impacts their families, their marriages, their wives, like all the traveling, everything we do. So just to see them to be vulnerable and open and just that sense of joy, it's kind of why you do what you do.”
The Celtics were built to get to this spot, but that doesn’t mean the path was easy. They won 64 games, but they weren’t expected to dominate. They did a lot right, but they had so much to learn along the way. That's why Mazzulla, when the Celtics blew a big lead in January, said he hoped Boston did it again 10 or 12 more times. Because he always knew that facing those situations then would prepare them for the now. He knew what was important, what the narratives were, and why conventional wisdom was the enemy.
“I think Joe's pretty good at, I wouldn't say predicting situations, but kind of putting this in awkward situations or situations that are very, very possible,” Jrue Holiday said. “We know that we're a pretty good team, and we're a pretty good team in the regular season, but the playoffs is, is a different beast. And, again, the last two games we were down eight with two minutes left, and I think to be able to manage the game, having Derrick White out there manage the game, and then JT and JB kind of take over, it's exactly what Joe was talking about. I think we have the mindset and the character for it, and then we just went out there and showed it.”
Game 4 still had some of those familiar feelings. This space very well could have been occupied by a thousand words on why the term “gentleman’s sweep” exists, but the Celtics decided to nix that idea. They didn’t seem interested in doing the things that have gotten them in trouble in the past. Jaylen Brown has said some version of ‘last year is last year’ this season, and he continues to be proven right.
“We feel like we’re a different team than we were last year and the year before that,” he said, with the glow of his Larry Bird trophy in his peripheral. “I know everybody wants to continue to kind of pigeonhole us to what was happening in the past but we’ve had a different team every single year, different coaches, we’ve had like three coaches in the last five years. And 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 season will be over, no matter what, in less than four weeks. The Celtics have, at most, seven games left to play. They've won 76 games, but they need to get to 80 for this story to have the ending it deserves.
They will spend a little more than a week preparing to do just that and deliver on the promise of this season, but for now they can just take a little break. For the next day or two, they can kick their feet up, relax, and smile. They have a bigger goal to get to, but what they just did was pretty damn cool.
“If you can't enjoy this, then I don't know what you can't enjoy,” Holiday said. “Not too many people get a chance to be in the Eastern Conference finals, and I know it can be a lot of pressure and a lot of buildup, but this is what we play for. This is what this is what the game is about. So just really blessed to be here, really grateful and excited that I was in these conference finals, and getting to go back to the finals.”
