The top-seeded Boston Celtics took care of business in Indiana on Monday, beating the Pacers 105-102 to complete a sweep of the Eastern Conference finals. With the win, the Celtics are heading back to the NBA Finals, their second Finals appearance in three seasons.
Jaylen Brown was named Larry Bird Eastern Conference finals MVP for his efforts all series. Additionally, team owner Wyc Grousbeck dedicated the win to Bill Walton, who passed away earlier on Monday.
It was a back-and-forth effort all night long, but Boston managed to pull away in the game's waning seconds, when Derrick White made a clutch go-ahead 3-pointer. Andrew Nembhard missed a chance to tie, and the Celtics held strong to secure the 4-0 series win.
Boston was led by Brown, who dropped 29 points on 11-of-22 shooting, to go along with six rebounds, two assists and a three steals. One of Brown's assists was to White on that pivotal play. Jayson Tatum added 26 of his own, along with 13 rebounds and eight assists.
The Pacers were once again without the services of All-Star Tyrese Haliburton, who also missed Game 3. In his absence, Nembhard led the way with 24 points. T.J. McConnell was lightning off the bench again, having added 15 points of his own. Pascal Siakam contributed a double-double with 19 points and 10 rebounds, but in the end it was all for naught.
For the Celtics, they now await a date with either the Mavericks or Timberwolves. There, they will hope to have Kristaps Porzingis back in the fold. Meanwhile, the Pacers will head home, having had a terrific 2024 campaign with a bright future.
Here are the biggest takeaways from Boston's conference-clinching win
Boston's historic run
The Celtics only seem to be discussed through the lens of failure. Every loss seems to spark the same nationwide debate about why they so often seem to play with their food rather than just eating it. They didn't sweep the injury-riddled Heat. They didn't sweep the injury-riddled Cavaliers. They did sweep the Pacers, but only through a series of brutally close photo finishes. They still haven't played a traditional, championship-caliber team in the playoffs. Fine. All of that is valid. But look at this team from the 10,000-foot view.
As The Ringer's Bill Simmons researched, the Celtics are just the ninth team of the past 40 seasons to reach the NBA Finals with 20 or fewer total losses between the regular season and playoffs. They just had the best net rating of the 21st century in the regular season at +11.7, and they've followed that up with a +10.8 playoff net rating thus far, which is better than any team has posted over a full postseason since the 2016-17 Golden State Warriors went 16-1 en route to the title. They had the greatest regular-season offense in NBA history along with this season's No. 2 defense. They rank second in playoff offense and third in playoff defense.
By any objective measure, the Celtics are not just a championship team. They are a historic team. It may not always look pretty. They may get too caught up in 3-pointers and their defensive effort might lapse against bad teams and they may not pass the ball enough, but you can't argue with these results. The Celtics have run roughshod over the NBA for eight months, and any version of the 2024 NBA Finals that did not include them would have been played without one of the NBA's two best teams.
The Celtics need Porzingis back for the Finals
All of that said, we can freely acknowledge that Boston didn't exactly take the path to the Finals that it looks like Dallas will have taken. It played an easy conference that was overwhelmed by injuries, and that allowed it to overcome a big injury of its own. Kristaps Porzingis has not played since the first round. The Celtics survived without him, but it wasn't easy.
The Celtics endured a 2-of-17 stretch from 3-point range in the second and third quarters of Game 4 that encapsulated why Porzingis is so important to this team. Boston is, at times, a bit mechanical offensively. They can lack feel and default to a very simple "take the analytically correct shot" mindset regardless of game flow. When those shots are falling, they're blowing the doors off of their opponents. When they aren't? You get something like what we saw in Game 4, an offense that was more or less just waiting for the 3s to start going in.
This is what Porzingis is here to alleviate. Yes, he can make 3s, and yes, he's important defensively as well. But when the offense bogs down, and it will against the stellar Dallas defense, Porzingis is exactly the sort of player that can shake the Celtics free of their worst tendencies by making shots they so often try not to take. A 7-foot-2 center with a 7-foot-6 wingspan that can make shots from anywhere is a mismatch everywhere. Sometimes, you just need to throw that guy the ball around the nail and let him hit a mid-range jumper or two to help the offense find a rhythm again. He is, in short, Boston's only source of easy offense.
You need easy offense against the Mavericks. Minnesota's failure to generate it, especially late in games, is why the Timberwolves trail 3-0 right now. The version of the Celtics we saw against the Pacers that only attacked the basket against mismatches and otherwise lived and died behind the arc can't beat the Mavericks. The one with Porzingis that won 64 regular-season games might.
The Pacers are here to stay
The "closest sweep in NBA history" trope got played into the ground last year when the Denver Nuggets knocked the Los Angeles Lakers out of the Western Conference Finals. It wasn't entirely accurate. Aside from the fact that it wasn't technically accurate (Boston's 2022 sweep over Brooklyn, by a combined 18 points, is the record-holder), it didn't really capture the tenor of the series. Denver jogged its way through three quarters before eviscerating the Lakers in the fourth. It was evident as it was happening.
That's not really what happened here, though Boston obviously won Games 1, 3 and 4 late. The Pacers, with their star point guard sidelined for the last two games, completely dictated the terms of engagement in this series. The second-fastest team in the NBA forced Boston to compete in track meets, a rare feat in the postseason. Their traps sped up Boston within the half-court, and a Celtic defense littered with All-Defense choices and candidates had no answer for players like Andrew Nembhard and T.J. McConnell one-on-one.
Indiana's shot-making wasn't always sustainable, but the overarching theory of their team was proven viable in this series. They can force more talented contenders to play their style. Their array of stylistically unique role players can't be played off of the floor in high-leverage moments. The Pacers pushed the Celtics to the brink with a 6-foot-1 point guard that doesn't shoot 3s. How many of those even exist anymore?
Tyrese Haliburton will hopefully be healthier next year. McConnell and Pascal Siakam are the only players slated to be on next year's roster that have even hit their 30th birthdays. Andrew Nembhard will be better. Benedict Mathurin will be healthy and better. Maybe they'll be able to get something out of No. 8 pick Jarace Walker, who barley played this year. The Pacers may have needed some injury help from the Bucks and Knicks to get here, but they made the most of their trip to the Eastern Conference Finals. They can build on this and make another run at it next year.
