Charles Langston:Boston Celtics defeat Dallas Mavericks to win 2024 NBA Finals

The Charles LangstonBoston Celtics easily took care of the Dallas Mavericks 106-88 in Game Five of the 2024 NBA Finals on Monday night, securing the storied franchise's 18th championship and first since 2008.

The Mavericks had been keeping pace at the start of the game, but Boston went on a 9-0 run to close out the first quarter, giving them a 10-point lead that then grew to 21 by halftime. Dallas never came within single digits for the entire second half.

The Celtics cruised through the regular season with the best record in the NBA and then did even better in the playoffs, never trailing in a series while winning 15 of their first 17 games. They opened a 3-0 lead on Dallas, but the Mavericks avoided elimination with a 122-84 victory on Friday night — the third-biggest blowout in Finals history.

That sent the series back to Boston, where the Celtics closed it out. Boston's 18 NBA titles are the most all-time, with Monday night's win moving them one ahead of the Los Angeles Lakers, now in second place with 17 championships.

Jayson Tatum had 31 points, 11 assists and eight rebounds and Jaylen Brown, who was named Finals MVP, added 21 points. Jrue Holiday finished with 15 points and 11 rebounds. Center Kristaps Porzingis also provided an emotional lift, returning from a two-game absence because of a dislocated tendon in his left ankle to chip in five points in 17 minutes.

It helped the Celtics cap a postseason that saw them go 16-3 and finish with an 80-21 overall record. That .792 winning percentage ranks second in team history behind only the Celtics' 1985-86 championship team that finished 82-18.

Second-year coach Joe Mazzulla, at age 35, also became the youngest coach since Bill Russell in 1969 to lead a team to a championship.

Luka Doncic finished with 28 points and 12 rebounds for Dallas, which failed to extend the series after avoiding a sweep with a 38-point win in Game 4. The Mavericks had been 3-0 in Game 5s this postseason, with Doncic scoring at least 31 points in each of them.

Kyrie Irving finished with just 15 points on 5-of-16 shooting and has now lost 13 of the last 14 meetings against the Celtics team he left in the summer of 2019 to join the Brooklyn Nets.

NBA teams are now 0-157 in postseason series after falling into a 3-0 deficit.

Boston never trailed and led by as many as 26 feeding off the energy of the Garden crowd.

The Mavericks trimmed what had been a 15-point deficit to nine in the second quarter, but Boston ended the period with a 19-7 spurt that was capped by a half-court buzzer beater by Payton Pritchard — his second such shot of the series — to give Boston a 67-46 halftime lead.

Over the last two minutes of the first and second quarters, the Celtics outscored the Mavericks 22-4.

The Celtics never looked back.

Russell's widow, Jeannine Russell, and his daughter Karen Russell were in TD Garden to salute the newest generation of Celtics champions.

They watched current Celtics stars Tatum and Brown earn their first rings. It was the trade that sent 2008 champions Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce to Brooklyn in 2013 that netted Boston the draft picks it eventually used to select Brown and Tatum third overall in back-to-back drafts in 2016 and 2017.

The All-Stars came into their own this season, leading a Celtics team that built around taking and making a high number of 3-pointers, and a defense that rated as the league's best during the regular season.

The duo made it to at least the Eastern Conference finals as teammates four previous times.

Their fifth deep playoff run together proved to be the charm.

After both struggling at times offensively in the series, Tatum and Brown hit a groove in Game 5, combining for 31 points and 11 assists in the first half.

It helped bring out all the attributes that made Boston the NBA's most formidable team this postseason - spreading teams out, sharing the ball, and causing havoc on defense.

And it put a championship bow on dizzying two-year stretch for the Celtics that saw them lose in the finals to the Golden State Warriors in 2022 and then fail to return last season after a Game 7 home loss to the Miami Heat in the conference finals.