Banner # 18

Here's Shank on the 2023 - 2024 NBA Champions:

A torch has been passed: Jaylen Brown, Jayson Tatum join the champions club and help Celtics raise Banner 18

Light up a Hoyo de Monterrey in honor of Red Auerbach and get ready for another parade. Playing on their fabled parquet floor, with banners flapping high above courtside, the Celtics won their NBA-best 18th championship Monday with a 106-88, NBA Finals Game 5 victory over the Dallas Mavericks.

Order is restored to the pro basketball universe. From the 1950s through the ‘80s, Boston’s Green Team ruled the National Basketball Association. The torch has been passed to a new generation of champions: Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown.

“It’s time for us to graduate,” Brown told Tatum before Game 5.

When it was over, Brown received the Bill Russell Finals MVP Trophy.

“It was a full team effort and Jayson Tatum was with me the whole way," said Brown.

One Win Away

Here's Shank's column after the Boston Celtics win Game 3 of the NBA Finals Wednesday night:

Game 3 was harder than it should have been, but Banner 18 is an inevitability for the Celtics

DALLAS — You can relax, Boston. It might happen here Friday, or maybe you’ll have to wait until Monday on Causeway Street, but it’s inevitable. The Celtics are going to raise their 18th championship banner.

Just try not to worry about your team letting a 21-point fourth-quarter lead dwindle to one in what seemed the blink of an eye.

It wasn’t as easy as it should have been, but the Celtics beat the Mavs again. Playing at American Airlines Center on Wednesday without tree-top Kristaps Porzingis, the Green Team took charge early in the fourth quarter, watched their big lead fizzle, then prevailed for a third straight game. The Celts rode the broad shoulders of the two Jays (Tatum had 31, Brown 30) to a 106-99 victory, taking a definitive 3-0 series lead in the NBA Finals.

Celtics Wrapup - II

Shank's been banging out the columns over the past week or so, with images of victory cigars after the Boston Celtics take a 2-0 series lead, and The Cooz wants another banner in the rafters, presumably so all of The Cooz's banners have some company!

Celtics Wrapup

With Shank firmly on the Boston Celtics bandwagon, he comes out with a bunch of columns the past couple of days. The first one lets us know it's good for us and the NBA, the second column is a Larry Bird Sighting^TM, which includes a Bruce Springsteen sighting / anecdote that I'll gladly ignore, and another column from Game 1, which Shank takes to all but declare an early winner.

I don't think that's good karma, but there it is.

Not Ready Yet

That's one conclusion drawn by Shank after the Celtics lost Game 6 (and the series) to the Golden State Warriors:

By blowing a massive opportunity, these Celtics showed they’re just not ready yet

The Celtics’ magical 2022 playoff run crash-landed on Causeway Street Thursday as the still-worthy Golden State Warriors won the NBA championship with a 103-90 Game 6 victory at the TD Garden.

Years from now, perhaps we’ll look back and see this as a building block for Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown and Co., but right now, it feels like one of the worst blown opportunities in 21st century Boston sports.

“It hurts that we fell short, but the future is bright,’’ said Celtics rookie coach Ime Udoka. " . . . This is just a start. The foundation’s been set. We can hit the ground running next year.’’

Missed Opportunity?

Shank looks at the Celtics' prospects after losing Game 5 of the NBA Finals to the Golden State Warriors:

It’s not over for the Celtics yet, but it sure feels like it after this lost opportunity

It’s not over yet. It just kind of feels that way.

The Celtics lost Game 5 of the NBA Finals to the Warriors, 104-94, at the Chase Center Monday and trail this championship series, three games to two as they ready for Game 6 in Boston. If these Celts are to win the franchise’s 18th banner, they’ll have to beat the Dubs Thursday at home, and again Sunday in San Francisco.

Possible . . . but unlikely. This feels like one massive missed opportunity.

The Celtics need to stop complaining about officiating and regain their composure. And Jayson Tatum needs to step up and play like an All-NBA first teamer. Tatum had 27 points and 10 rebounds Monday, but this was a 1-point game going into the fourth quarter and Tatum again turtled down the stretch, making 1 of 5 shots with no rebounds and no assists in 11 soft minutes of the fourth. He was minus-13 for the night.

Missed Shots

You stop paying attention for a few days, and what do you know? Shank's been banging out the Celtics columns. A few days ago he's talking to Celtic greats Bob Cousy and Satch Sanders about the current crop of Celtics, yestrday Shank and a bunch of Globies make their series predictions (Shank says Celtics in 7 games), and last night Shank was quick out of the gate with a column on the Celtics winning Game 1 of the NBA Championship. I spotted the column about 35 minutes after the game was over, and there's almost no way to do a column that quick, so I'm going to ask him - is it voice to text he's using or is he like a 110 words a minute typer?

Finals Bound

That's Shank after the Celtics won Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Finals:

Finally, the Celtics earn their chance to bring another championship to Boston

Remember all the parades between 2002 and 2019 . . . back in the good old days before COVID-19?

The Celtics earned a ticket to the 2022 NBA Finals with a thrilling, smashmouth, 100-96, Game 7 victory over the top-seeded Heat Sunday night at FTX Arena in Miami. Boston led the entire game and staved off a furious late-game comeback by Jimmy Butler and the Heat.

This means that after three, predominantly pandemic-plagued years, confetti could rain on Boylston Street next month for the first time since Tom Brady beat the Rams to win a Super Bowl in February 2019.

Playing in the image of franchise forefathers Bill Russell, KC Jones and Dennis Johnson, the Celtics were the best defensive team in the NBA this year and now-ready-for-primetime stars Jayson Tatum (26 points), Jaylen Brown (24), and Marcus Smart (24) are finally going to the Finals.

...

This new generation of Celtic stars has a chance to extend our local sports High Renaissance (12 championships in the new millennium), which started with 24-year-old Brady upsetting the St. Louis Rams in New Orleans in February 2002.

This looks like Shank's usual modus operandi - set the Celtics up with high to unreasonable expectations so he can take a monster dump on them should they fail to acheive those expectations.

A Local Angle

Uninterested in reporting on the baseball All-Star game, Shank takes a predictable parochial angle to the NBA Finals:

Here’s one (local) reason to be interested in the NBA Finals

If you’ve tuned out the NBA Finals because there’s no LeBron, no Steph Curry, and no Kyrie to boo, there’s still reason to watch the Suns against the Bucks.

It’s the local angle. A kid from Arlington is playing big minutes for the Bucks.

Pat Connaughton is running up and down the court with Giannis Antetokounmpo, guarding Chris Paul, and averaging 10 points and four rebounds and 30 minutes in a series that resumes Wednesday night in Milwaukee with the Bucks trailing, 2-1. Connaughton has made eight of his 17 3-point attempts.

“He brings toughness and versatility,” says former Celtics basketball boss Danny Ainge. “He can switch and guard multiple positions. He’s a strong, tough kid who can guard bigger people and smaller people. He makes open shots and gets offensive rebounds. He’s just a really active player that gives everything he’s got.”

On This Day Forty Years Ago

...Shank covered a basketball game:

On this date in 1978 the Washington Bullets won their only NBA Championship, beating the Sonics in Seattle. Dennis Johnson went 0-14 from the floor for the Sonics. I covered the game for the Baltimore Evening Sun. 40 years ago.

— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) June 8, 2018

Lots of 'Man, you're old' responses, and others, at the link.

Doubling Down On Stupid

If you've been following the NBA Finals, you may have noticed how talented the 2016-2017 Golden State Warriors are. They were one win away from an accomplishment no other NBA team has ever done - winning every single playoff game without losing a single game. They have blown out the Cleveland Cavaliers twice on their home floor and will play tonight, once again on their home floor. Rational observers would conclude that tonight's game will be Mission Impossible for the road team, the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Then there's this guy:

I’m pulling for the Cavaliers, and for good reason

Go Cavs. Go LeBron. Bring the NBA Finals back to the Q, back to the land of the $3 Pabst Blue Ribbon, back to the city where Oil Can Boyd once said, “They built a ballpark by the ocean.’’

I don’t know about you, but I am loving these NBA Finals and I don’t want the series to end. The likelihood, of course, is that Kevin Durant, Steph Curry, and the rest of the indomitable Warriors will finish off the Cavaliers on Monday night at Oracle Arena. confetti and superlatives will fly.

Durant will get his unearned ring and the “Warriors are the greatest ever” narrative will resume. I might have to submit that, like the UConn women, the Warriors are ruining their sport (only kidding, Geno).

He's delusional. Kevin Durant's the reason Golden State's been as good as they've been. You can make the argument that Durant's been playing as well as Lebron has. It's insulting to read something this ignorant, but we're reading a column by Dan Shaughnessy, so it comes with the territory.

But wouldn’t it be much better if the Cavs beat the Warriors in Game 5 and bring the series back to Cleveland for Game 6? Wouldn’t it be great to see the front-running Warriors play with some actual pressure for a change? Wouldn’t it be great if the Cavs could fly Kevin Millar into town and have him start telling everyone some basketball version of “Don’t let the Cavs win this game tonight. ’Cause then they got Schill and Pedro and anything can happen in Game 7!’’

Nothing reeks Shank quite like a Red Sox reference in an NBA Finals column!

I give you all of that. But Durant’s shameless ring-chasing (“Can’t beat the 73-win Warriors as a member of the Thunder? Think I’ll join them”) and the rush to anoint the Warriors best ever has made me a Cavaliers fan.

Question for Shank - how different is this from, um, LeBron James joining the Miami Heat years ago? Shank's suffering yet another case of Convenient Memory Loss in order to make a point.

And, of course, we need to mention Larry Bird! and those Celtics / Lakers teams of yore:

The star power of this matchup is as good as the NBA has offered since Celtics-Lakers gave us Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Kevin McHale, James Worthy, and Robert Parish all in the same series. Those guys faced one another three times in four years. Now we have LeBron, Kyrie Irving, Kevin Love, Durant, Draymond Green, Klay Thompson, and Curry. We have had memorable moments in every game.

This is a quintessential Shank NBA Finals column as they get, Shankisms and all. Thank the Almighty we're one Warriors win away from not having to read another one for fifty weeks.