The Boston Celtics were indebted to Jrue Holiday after they moved one win away from reaching the NBA Finals with Saturday's victory against the Indiana Pacers.
Holiday converted a three-point play with 38 seconds remaining, then made a game-saving steal as the Celtics overcame an 18-point deficit to beat the Pacers 114-111 for a 3-0 Eastern Conference finals lead.
Indiana's Andrew Nembhard seemed set to claw the Pacers back into Game 3 late on, yet Holiday stepped across for a "trademark steal" to guide his side over the line.
"That's a trademark steal that he always gets with the inside hand," Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla said of Holiday.
"He gets that a lot usually when a guy is coming down the sideline, but he got it in transition. He made a big-time play."
As Nembhard looked to cut inside the court, Holiday suggested he always knew what was coming.
"He's a right-hand driver," the Celtics hero said after the game, "and he'd been very, very aggressive all night."
Nembhard managed 32 points and nine assists but even that brilliance was not enough to outsmart one of NBA's best defensive players.
"I was trying to get a shot up," said Nembhard. "He got in front of me. I lost the ball, slipped. Turnover."
Jayson Tatum impressed for Boston with 36 points, 10 rebounds, 8 assists and no turnovers in 44 minutes, yet he put all the focus on the match-winning Holiday.
"I mean, can't speak highly enough about Jrue," said Tatum. "The ultimate teammate competitor, obviously a champion, wasn't at shootaround today, he was sick.
"Dealing with chills and stuff like that. And we've all been there, how tough that is, to fight through it, and for him to come out there and lay it all on the line for us, make the game-winning play essentially, especially on the defensive end.
"Jrue is just a big-time player, and he made a tremendous play."
The Celtics can clinch their second NBA Finals appearance in three seasons with a win in Game 4 on Monday in Indianapolis.
Thunder reportedly acquiring Caruso from Bulls for Giddey
Oklahoma City and Chicago have swapped guards, with the Thunder acquiring Alex Caruso from the Bulls in exchange for Josh Giddey on Thursday.
ESPN was the first to report the trade, which cannot become official until July 6.
The 30-year-old Caruso is considered one of the NBA's top defenders, having been named to a pair of All-Defensive teams.
He is also viewed as an important role player for a potential championship contender after helping the Los Angeles Lakers win the 2019-20 title.
The Thunder finished with the Western Conference's best record this past season, but were knocked out of the play-offs in the semi-final round by the Dallas Mavericks.
A seven-year NBA veteran, Caruso averaged career highs of 10.1 points and 3.8 rebounds this past season, along with 3.5 assists and 1.69 steals while starting 57 of 71 games.
Giddey, the sixth overall pick of the 2021 draft, started 80 games for the Thunder this past season, but saw his numbers drop from 2022-23.
After averaging 16.6 points, 7.9 rebounds and 6.2 assists in his second season, the 21-year-old Giddey averaged 12.3 points, 6.4 boards and 4.8 assists in 2023-24. He is a career 46.4 per cent shooter from 3-point range.
He was investigated for having an improper relationship with an underage girl, but the NBA and police were "unable to corroborate any criminal activity."
The NBA dropped its investigation.
Lakers to hire Redick as head coach
The Los Angeles Lakers will hire JJ Redick as their next head coach, handing him the job despite the former NBA guard having no coaching experience whatsoever.
Redick was not the Lakers’ first choice after they were recently turned down by Dan Hurley, who led the University of Connecticut to its second straight NCAA Tournament title this past season.
Los Angeles will instead have the 39-year-old Redick – and LeBron James’ podcast partner - on the sidelines next season after the former Duke University star spent the last few years with ESPN following his retirement from the NBA in September 2021.
Redick and James started a podcast called “Mind the Game” in March, and Los Angeles hopes that relationship convinces James to exercise his $51.4million contract option this month and not become a free agent.
Redick takes over for Darvin Ham, who was fired in May after the Lakers went 47-35 before losing to the Denver Nuggets in the first round of the playoffs.
Ham guided Los Angeles to the Western Conference finals in his first season as head coach in 2022-23. The Lakers were swept by the eventual NBA champion Nuggets.
The Orlando Magic selected Redick with the 11th overall pick in the 2006 NBA Draft, and he went on to play 15 seasons in the league.
He is 20th all-time in NBA history with 1,950 made 3-pointers and ranks 15th in league history with a 41.5 shooting percentage from 3-point range.
NBA title affirms Celtics' dominance
Though the 2024 NBA playoffs saw its share of surprising outcomes, in the end the best team reigned supreme.
And the Boston Celtics left no doubt of their superiority by seizing the franchise's record 18th Larry O'Brien Trophy with one of the most successful post-season stretches of the NBA's modern era, maintaining the level of dominance they displayed while winning a league-best 64 games during the regular season.
Monday's clinical 106-88 victory over the over-matched Dallas Mavericks in Game 5 of the Finals was the fitting conclusion to a stellar play-off run in which the Celtics went 16-3. That winning percentage of .842 is the second-best by an NBA champion since the league moved to a best-of-seven format for all four rounds in 2003, bettered only by the 2017 Golden State Warriors super-team that lost just once during that year's play-offs.
Detractors will be quick to point out Boston's relatively easy path to glory, as they didn't have to face any of the Western Conference's top four seeds in the Finals and also avoided the East's second and third-best teams, the New York Knicks and Milwaukee Bucks, in earlier rounds.
The numbers suggest it may not have mattered.
Boston finished the regular season with the league's best offensive rating (120.2) and ranked third in defensive rating (109.0), and their 11.2 net rating (the difference between offensive and defensive rating) was the highest by any team since the aforementioned 2016–17 Warriors posted a 12.1 mark en route to capturing their second of three NBA titles within a four-year span.
And the Celtics cruised through the play-offs despite Kristaps Porzingis, one of the team's three 20-point-per-game scorers, missing 12 total games with a leg injury that rendered him to a reduced supporting role for much of the Finals.
So, what were the main factors behind Boston's season-long run of brilliance, one this budding dynasty appears to be fully capable of extending beyond 2024? Here's a closer look:
Three-point markmanship
Head coach Joe Mazzulla's offence is built around the 3-point shot, as the Celtics hoisted up a league-high 3,482 trey attempts during the regular season - 240 more than the next highest team - and had a staggering 47.1 per cent of their total shots taken from beyond the arc.
If you're taking that many long-distance shots, you better have guys that can make them. And Boston certainly did.
The 2023-24 Celtics became the first team in NBA history with seven players that shot 37 per cent or better from beyond the 3-point line while having 250 or more attempts in a season, and their overall 3-point percentage of .388 ranked second in the league behind only Western Conference regular-season champion Oklahoma City's .389.
And when Boston was hitting its threes, it was virtually unbeatable. The Celtics were 36-1 in the regular season when shooting over 40 per cent from 3-point range, and 8-0 in the post-season when that number was higher than 37.5 per cent.
Disruptive defence
The Celtics also had the NBA's best net rating in 2022-23, a season which memorably ended with a stunning seven-game loss to the eighth-seeded Miami Heat in the Eastern Conference finals. Miami pulled off the upset by beating Boston at its own game, as it shot a scorching 43.4 per cent from 3-point range for the series while the Celtics struggled to a 30.3 per cent success rate.
Dallas, which had the second-highest rate of 3-point shots attempted per total field goal attempts during the regular season at 44.1 per cent, was determined to follow the Heat's blueprint in the Finals, but this Celtics team would have none of it.
The Mavericks made good on over 40 per cent of their shots from beyond the arc in their Game 4 blowout win, but were held under 30 per cent in three of their losses and under 32 per cent overall for the series as Boston's perimeter disruptors - led by six-time All-Defensive Team member Jrue Holiday and Finals MVP Jaylen Brown - put the clamps on Dallas' sensational backcourt duo of Luka Dončić and Kyrie Irving.
Doncic made just 11 of 45 (24.4 per cent) of his 3-point tries for the series, and the ex-Celtic Irving wasn't much better at 27.6 per cent. The Mavericks shot 29.7 per cent as a team from long distance when Holiday was on the court and 29.9 per cent when Brown was in the game.
Dynamic depth
Boston was able to navigate Porzingis' lengthy absence, as well as the shooting struggles of top scorer Jayson Tatum for sizeable portions of the Finals, with relative ease due to strong contribtions from a few of its role players, most notably Al Horford and Sam Hauser.
The 38-year-old Horford stepped into a starting role with Porzingis either unavailable or limited for much of the post-season and handled it with aplomb, especially on the defensive end where the Celtics were a stingier outfit with the grizzled veteran on the court.
Hauser, an undrafted 3-point specialist whose role off the bench steadily increased during the season, made his presence felt as well by going 11 of 23 (47.8 per cent) from beyond the arc for the Dallas series. The Celtics were a plus-17 with him on the court over the five games.
A dynasty brewing?
Under a steady sequence of shrewd moves from former coach turned president of basketball operations Brad Stevens and predecessor Danny Ainge, the Celtics have assembled the NBA's most complete roster and one that has the capability of potentially wreaking havoc for years to come. With Horford hinting at his intentions to return for an 18th NBA season, Boston will have all of its main players back for next season with its core of Tatum, Brown and Porzingis still in their primes.
Add in a coach in Mazzulla who's still not 36 years old with still room to further perfect his craft, and it's not hard to envision yet another banner or two hanging from the rafters of TD Garden in the near future.
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