They were 14 games and 6.7 points per game better than any other Eastern Conference team in the regular season. Now they’re heading to the NBA Finals, having lost just two games (fewest for any finalist in the last seven years) through the first three rounds of the playoffs.
The Indiana Pacers gave the Celtics three close games in the Eastern Conference Finals, but Boston came back from another fourth-quarter deficit and completed the sweep with a 105-102 victory on Monday.
Jaylen Brown earned the Larry Bird Trophy as series MVP after averaging 29.8 points (52% shooting), 5 rebounds and 3 assists in the series. He made the biggest shot of the series (a game-tying 3-pointer at the end of regulation in Game 1) and assisted on the next biggest shot (Derrick White’s go-ahead 3 on Monday).
“I wasn’t expecting that at all,” Brown said of winning the award. “I never win (expletive). I was just happy that we won.”
To win, the Celtics needed contributions throughout their rotation to dispatch “a team that just would not quit,” as Al Horford described the Pacers.
Here are some notes, quotes, numbers and film as the Celtics advanced to the NBA Finals for the 23rd time in franchise history.
Through the first two rounds of the playoffs, the Celtics had played just 79 seconds of “clutch time,” where the score was within five points in the last five minutes of the fourth quarter or overtime. In this series, they played 18 minutes of clutch time across Games 1, 3 and 4.
They’re now 25-12 in games that were within five points in the last five minutes this season. That includes a 4-0 mark in the playoffs, having scored 53 points on 41 clutch offensive possessions (1.29 per).
Previous versions of this team have often been maligned for their late-game execution. Over the 2020-21 and 2021-22 seasons (including playoffs), the Celtics were 38-53 (.418) in clutch games.
But head coach Joe Mazzulla and his staff have been doing extra prep on those situations. Assistant coach (and new Charlotte Hornets coach) Charles Lee revealed in an X spaces conversation earlier this season that the staff had meetings to go over late-game situations before every home game, “watching film of other teams, watching film of ourselves and hashing through situations.”
