Tatum displays on the second he knew the Celtics would win the NBA title initially appeared on NBC Sports activities Boston
The Boston Celtics had been by far probably the most dominant crew within the NBA final season. They completed 14 video games forward of the New York Knicks for second within the Japanese Convention, then crushed the Celtics late within the season with a 16-3 report en path to their 18th title.
However the 2023-24 Celtics have not offered the bear pores and skin earlier than they’ve killed it — for probably the most half.
Throughout a current occasion on the Maynard (Mass.) High-quality Arts Theatre To advertise his new youngsters’s guide, Tatum instructed that the thought of his crew truly successful a title got here to him when the Minnesota Timberwolves eradicated the defending champion Denver Nuggets within the second spherical of the 2024 playoffs.
“Folks all the time ask me, when do you know you had been going to win a championship?” Tatum mentioned, by Gary Washburn of the Boston Globe“When Minnesota beat Denver, I felt like Denver was the one crew that was proper for us. I assumed we had been going to play Denver within the finals and it was going to be an excellent ultimate.”
The Nuggets had been the one crew to win the sequence in opposition to the Celtics, beating Boston in two shut video games (102-100 at TD Backyard in January and 115-109 in Denver in March). However Nikola Jokic and his teammates blew a 3-2 result in the Wolves, who then misplaced to the Mavericks within the Western Convention Finals, establishing a Boston-Dallas NBA Finals.
Tatum mentioned the championship feeling Actually began to sink after his Celtics gained Recreation 3 of the NBA Finals to take a 3-0 sequence lead, which no crew in NBA historical past has surpassed.
“After we had been in Dallas and we had been up 3-0, oh my God,” Tatum mentioned. “No person’s ever come again from 0-3, so I bear in mind coming again to the locker room and saying, I don’t know what recreation it’s going to be, however we’re going to win the championship.
“It was a bizarre feeling. I couldn’t sleep that evening and I bear in mind the morning of Recreation 4, we had a shootaround, and I’d by no means been able the place if we gained tonight, we’d be champions. We had been within the shootaround and everybody was attempting to behave regular. I couldn’t get a nap. We misplaced by 30 factors. We needed to win so unhealthy. We had been so anxious and so tight.
“However I knew once we got here residence for Recreation 5, we had been going to win.”
As Tatum admitted, the Celtics’ nerves had been on show. in recreation 4, an unbalanced defeat 122-84 that introduced the sequence again to Boston for Recreation 5. However the C’s assured there could be no Recreation 6 with a convincing 106-88 victory — led by Tatum’s 31 factors, eight rebounds and 11 assists — that allowed them to have fun Banner 18 on their residence courtroom.
The Celtics have responded nicely to adversity all season, dropping simply three straight video games through the common season and going an ideal 3-0 after playoff losses. They’re going to want much more resilience this season in the event that they need to develop into the primary crew for the reason that 2018 Golden State Warriors to repeat as NBA champions.
