The Boston Celtics were the NBA's most dominant team by a wide margin last season. They finished 14 games ahead of the No. 2 seed New York Knicks in the Eastern Conference, then steamrolled to a 16-3 postseason record en route to their 18th championship.
But the 2023-24 Celtics didn't count their chickens before they were hatched -- for the most part.
During a recent event the Maynard (Mass.) Fine Arts Theatre to promote his new children's book, Tatum suggested the thought of his team actually winning a title first dawned on him when the Minnesota Timberwolves eliminated the defending champion Denver Nuggets in the second round of the 2024 playoffs.
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"People always ask me, when did you guys know you were going to win a championship?" Tatum said, via The Boston Globe's Gary Washburn. "When Minnesota beat Denver, I felt like Denver was the only team that they matched up best with us. I thought that we were going to play Denver in the Finals and it was going to be a good one."
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The Nuggets were the only team to sweep their season series with the Celtics, beating Boston in a pair of close games (102-100 at TD Garden in January and 115-109 in Denver in March). But Nikola Jokic and Co. blew a 3-2 series lead to the Wolves, who then fell to the Mavericks in the Western Conference Finals to set up a Boston-Dallas NBA Finals.
Tatum said the championship feeling really began to sink in after his Celtics won Game 3 of the NBA Finals to take a 3-0 series lead, which no team in NBA history has surmounted.
“When we were in Dallas and we went up, 3-0, oh my God," Tatum said. "Nobody has ever come back from 0-3, so I remember getting back to the locker room and I remember saying, I don’t know what game it’s going to be, but we’re going to win the championship.
"That was a weird feeling. I wasn’t able to sleep that night and I remember the morning of Game 4 we had shootaround, and I had never been in the position that if we win tonight, we’re champions. We were at shootaround and everybody was trying to act normal. I couldn’t take a nap. We lost by like 30. We wanted to win so bad. We were so anxious and so tight.
"But I knew when we were coming back home for Game 5, we were going to win."
As Tatum admitted, the Celtics' nerves showed in Game 4, a lopsided 122-84 loss that brought the series back to Boston for Game 5. But the C's ensured there wouldn't be a Game 6 with a resounding 106-88 victory -- led by Tatum's 31 points, eight rebounds and 11 assists -- that allowed them to celebrate Banner 18 on their home floor.
The Celtics responded well to adversity all season, only losing back-to-back games three times during the regular season and going a perfect 3-0 after losses in the playoffs. They'll need even more resilience this season if they want to become the first team since the 2018 Golden State Warriors to repeat as NBA champions.
