Moments after Game 5’s buzzer, Jason Tatum seemed speechless. The euphoria of winning a championship had overcome his body. He told ESPN’s Lisa Salters how surreal it felt, then muttered three simple words, “we did it,” and when he couldn’t think of anything else, he yelled them again. “WE DID IT!”
Jaylen Brown was tongue-tied, too. Both times that he won Conference Finals MVP and Finals MVP, Brown was at a loss for words in the biggest moment of his young career.
But when the confetti finally settled, they both struck a similar tone. Banner 18 felt like a vindication for them. It wasn’t necessarily a culmination of all their hard work or the trials of failed playoffs failure and now, tribulation of winning a Larry O’Brien. Winning a ring was a referendum on all the criticism and doubt they had received along the way. They unabashedly wanted to silence their critics.
It’s athlete-speak to say that you don’t check social media during the regular season or watch TV in the playoffs, but it’s obvious that these two Gen-Zers had been reading their clippings.
A common refrain in the locker room celebration and postgame pressers was “what they gonna say now?!” They weren’t referring to the Heat, Cavaliers, Pacers, and Mavericks who they collectively lost just three games to en route to a championship. No, those comments were directed to the national and occasionally local media.
Jordan Brand already had a commercial queued up for Tatum’s triumph with the tagline “don’t stop disbelieving.” On Friday, Brown wore a t-shirt that repeated a May 26th tweet, imploring ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith to “state your source” who said that Brown wasn’t liked. During the season, it even went so far as closing the door on Boston’s open-door policy of inviting alumni to the Auerbach Center on Kendrick Perkins, the starting center of the ‘08 championship squad turned hot take maker at ESPN. NBC Sports Boston’s Brian Scalabrine, a former teammate of Perkins, said that he wears a “scarlet letter” with the franchise after continuously trying to break the Jays up and calling Joe Mazzulla a “birdbrain.”
In the end, major media outlets eventually credited the Celtics for their dominant run in the postseason. Of course, some hedged and had qualifiers. “The East was in shambles,” they said. “They didn’t play Denver,” some whispered. Others moved the goal posts of greatness and questioned if they were truly great and could repeat.
Maybe it’s my bias working in this field, but this felt like the most critiqued run in this modern era of talking heads. Considering the numbers in front of them — frankly, the facts — the Celtics dominance isn’t even debatable.
Maybe this is just the state of play. The line between commentary and criticism has been blurred and smudged out by naysayers and Monday morning quarterbacks. Sports journalism has been more about predicting what’s going to happen and finding fault in failure rather than the actual game.
This isn’t meant to be a criticism of the media. It’s more nostalgia really. Growing up with Sports Illustrated and Jackie Mac and SportsCenter with Dan Patrick and Keith Olbermann, sports were celebrated. Sure, every game had a loser, but they weren’t picked apart and overanalyzed. There was a grace we gave the game and at its best, sports taught us about the human condition and didn’t highlight the ugliest of human nature. We didn’t make baseless assumptions on a person’s character or worse, pass judgement on who they were and even worse, who they could be.
In an interview with ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne, Tatum told her:
“We were always good and talented. The game needed to slow down. We got to the conference finals two out of our first three years, and it just seemed like we were all so much older than we actually are. Everybody was like, ‘Oh, they didn’t win it. They can’t play together. They should trade him.’ And I was always like, ‘I just turned 26 and he’s 27.’ Nobody wanted to give us no time.”
They’re teammates sensed that media-laden weight, too. Jrue Holiday said at the conclusion of the Finals, “they get scrutinized so much. And they get so much pressure put on them for not winning… It’s been great to experience on this side. Hopefully, it’s a burden off their shoulders. But another burden is doing it again.”
Photo by Brian Babineau/NBAE via Getty Images
For this Celtics team, thankfully, the often harsh and unfair microscope that they’ve been under was shattered on June 17th. Finally, the roar of over a million fans filling the streets of Boston drowned out all the noise. Joy wasn’t dampened by the context of opposing teams’ injuries and the myriad of possibilities when it comes to conferences and matchups. Faith and loyalty were rewarded even though the haters and doubters had bigger microphones.
Sean Grande, the radio voice of the Celtics, put it best.
“Individually, they weren’t perfect for the last eight months. But collectively, they were. The result is one of the most immaculate seasons of all time. It’s no longer what could be or what might be. Now, it just is. The 2024 Boston Celtics are one of the greatest teams in NBA history. They were told they had to win. There’s only one thing you can do when expectations are that high: meet them. There’s only one way to stop being haunted by the ghosts and the legends and the champions atop this building: join them. Together they have and together they stand alone on top of the mountain for now. Once again, the Boston Celtics stand alone for all-time. It is Banner 18. The mission demanded is mission accomplished.”
