Ranking the Finals' 11 Most Important Celtics

Not since the 2004-2005 Detroit Pistons have we seen a champion whose whole exceeded the sum of such prodigious parts. No squad wins a championship on the backs of just one or two players, but Boston’s championship was a genuine teamwide effort.

This was a historically dominant run, as Zach Lowe and many, many others detailed nicely this morning. The Celtics never broke a sweat while dominating the regular season and playoffs.

Sure, the ring is nice, but the individual Boston players deserve more shine than one Finals MVP trophy can contain. Jaylen Brown won the award, but most valuable isn’t quite the same as most important. So, as a capper for the season, I created the definitive and objectively correct ranking of the Finals’ Most Important Celtics.

11) The TD Garden Crowd

Forget Derrick White and Jrue Holiday for a minute. Nobody on the Celtics guarded Kyrie Irving as well as the shamrock-clad Boston faithful. Need proof? Check this:

“Let’s call it what it is, when the fans are chanting ‘Kyrie sucks’ or anything, they feel like they have a psychological edge — and that’s fair,” said Irving.

Irving scored 35 and then 21 (in just 30 minutes of a Dallas blowout) in two games at home but never topped 16 points in three games in Boston. The leprechauns don’t forget.

10) Payton Pritchard

Ignore the stats, which suggest Payton Pritchard played a rather dismal series. You know why Payton Pritchard is on here:

And again, for good measure:

Those shots are backbreaking morale-destroyers; those shots are galvanizers of the finest vintage. Pritchard only hit a trio of triples all series, but two will be seared forever into Celtics history.

9) Sam Hauser

Hauser did what Hauser does, knocking down 11 of his 23 three-pointers. He only shot four two-pointers all series! While he was attacked defensively, as usual, he generally held his own and sometimes trapped the Mavericks into a self-inflicted game of mismatch hunting that generally hurt more than it helped.

Hauser’s off-ball movement is a level above anyone else’s on this shooting-obsessed roster. There’s a reason he had the highest individual offensive rating of any rotation player on the team, and while that’s a heavily flawed stat, it does indicate the degree to which his spacing opens things up for everyone else.

8) Kristaps Porziņģis

Porziņģis was incendiary in the first part of Game 1, scoring at will and swatting shots like King Kong knocking away bothersome airplanes. Unfortunately, a strange, new injury that will require surgery limited him to just three appearances and only one healthy game.

His absence proved his value as much as his presence. Dallas had more buckets at the rim and could play their preferred defensive style when KP wasn’t available, and much of their limited success came with Porziņģis off the court.

7) Al Horford

The 38-year-old finally got his ring, and he was no happy bystander. Porziņģis’ health issues thrust Horford into the central spotlight, where he more than delivered. Horford defended Luka Dončić and Kyrie Irving with aplomb, nailed his threes, and had nine combined steals and blocks. He looked every bit the capable two-way player he was in his prime, albeit in a smaller role.

Horford even put the ball on the floor and took it strong to the hoop several times, turning back the clock:

Just, uh, don’t ask him to handle the ball in transition.

6) Derrick White

It’s a testament to the greatness of this Celtics squad that Derrick White appears so low on this list (and he would have ranked higher in previous playoff rounds when he was a bigger part of the offense). But White was still his usual phenomenal self, ending the series shooting 40% from deep and with a highlight reel of rejections. None was more critical than the potentially game-saving block of PJ Washington at the end of Game 2:

White, quietly as always, may have been the most consistent Celtic in the Finals. He notched at least 14 points and made at least three triples in every Celtics win.

I went deep on Derrick White not too long ago, so I’ll save my word count for the next few people. But suffice it to say that he has earned himself quite a payday in his coming extension negotiations.

5) Joe Mazzulla

Truthfully, I found Mazzulla the hardest person to place of all. I’ve been a Mazzulla advocate all year. He improved his weaknesses from last season while furthering his mad-scientist bonafides with unique defensive schemes and an effective (if unorthodox) leadership style that players seemed to love.

It's true that other coaches could have taken a team this talented to the podium. But Mazzulla did. It wasn’t a case of passive game-managing, either. Mazzulla’s philosophical threads run through everything on this team, and the results — a historically impressive run through the regular and postseason — speak for themselves.

After a contentious ending to last season and plenty of second-guessing from fans and media, it would have been easy for Mazzulla to crumble. Instead, a shiny championship ring burnished his reputation perhaps more than anyone else’s.

4) Jaylen Brown

We’re getting to the point where there are cases for everyone to be the most important Celtic, but someone has to come in fourth.

Brown’s per-game averages of 21/5/5 on 44% shooting (24% from deep) don’t leap off the page compared to previous Finals MVPs, but he consistently applied pressure to Dallas’ defense with his ability to get into the paint. Particularly during Boston’s first three wins, Brown felt unstoppable. He hit several clutch jumpers, often over Dončić, when Dallas threatened an upset in Games 2 and 3.

Brown was even more impressive on the other end.

He was the tip of the spear on defense, smothering Dončić all series. Dončić often scored anyway, but Brown’s ability to make him work for his buckets allowed the other Celtics to mostly stay home on their marks, limiting Dončić’s playmaking. Brown even had success straight-up taking Luka’s cookies, snatching the ball away on a live dribble several times:

He was a tone-setter on both ends of the floor, and it’s understandable why the media picked him as the Finals MVP. Brown is a great player who keeps improving. It’s scary for the rest of the league to think he might carry this playoff performance over to next year.

3) Jrue Holiday

Holiday impacted the series from every angle in ways both expected and unexpected.

Holiday’s strengths were apparent. Somehow, he was only credited with three steals, but he constantly nailed his famous swipe-downs, getting a piece of the ball as the Mavs were driving through the lane:

He also gave a clinic in screen navigation, forcing Mavs’ ballhandlers to turn multiple times before they could get into the paint (if they could get there at all).

But the defense, albeit in top form even by Holiday’s lofty standards, was to be expected (I’ve never felt more vindicated about my unpopular decision to put Holiday as a First-Team All-Defensive guard). It was the other, more unusual, stuff that popped.

With Dončić as his primary defender for much of the series, coach Mazzulla used Holiday like a big man for long swathes of the series. The 6’4” Holiday lived in the dunker spot, waiting for dump-off opportunities from a driving Tatum and forcing Dončić (or smaller defenders) to be the last line of defense. This action was a staple:

He also used clever cuts to knife to the hoop for easy layups when the defense paid too much attention to Tatum and Brown. When the Mavs adjusted, the Celtics had Holiday set and slip on-ball screens as much as humanly possible. How often did we see Jrue get the ball on the short roll (often out of a dribble-hand-off or pitch action to Tatum like the one below) and make a clever play?

The answer: so many times.

Adding to his big-man credentials, Holiday was the leading offensive rebounder in the series through the first three games (he ended with 13, six more than the Celtics’ second-place player). And don’t forget Holiday’s 26-point, 11-rebound, 0-turnover Game 2 showing (arguably the best individual performance of the series, given that it came in a tight contest).

Holiday impacted every facet of the game in a way that no other player did, and I thought hard about bumping him up a spot before ultimately putting him third.

2) Jayson Tatum

The Celtics’ best player could not buy a bucket (but still notched two 30-point games). His individual defense was solid but also the weakest of Boston’s starting non-centers when matched up against Irving or Dončić. So why does he rank so high?

Because Tatum was the focal point of everything Dallas did on defense. He consistently put his head down, bullied to the rim, and drew multiple defenders, opening up passing lanes and putting the defense in rotation. His 54 potential assists led both teams; his 36 realized assists were eight more than Dončić!

The passing is great in and of itself, but it’s really just a numerical indicator of how much attention Tatum drew and his impact on his teammates.

On the defensive end, Tatum’s size and flexibility allowed coach Mazzulla to put him on Dallas’ centers, taking the Mavs out of their rhythm. He successfully limited the rebounding of the opposing centers, neutralizing what should have been a significant Mavs’ advantage.

I believe that the best players in series like this don’t get the credit they deserve when they have a down couple of scoring games. Yes, Tatum could have shot the ball better. The side-step threes after six dribbles to nowhere can be frustrating.

But his presence opened up everything for his teammates. Jaylen Brown and Co. wouldn’t have nearly the impact that they did if Tatum didn’t suck up so much of the defense’s attention.

I think back to the 2015 NBA Finals, when Andre Iguodala won Finals MVP for his defensive efforts on LeBron. Iguodala played fantastically, but everything on both sides revolved around Stephen Curry. Curry was the Warriors’ driving force on offense, and while LeBron targeted him on defense, he generally held up well, forcing Cleveland into a morass of isolations as James tried to carry an injured (and therefore wildly untalented) Cavs team to the mountaintop. The case for Iguodala was fine, superficially, but it ignored that Curry was the underlying foundation for success.

I feel that way about the Celtics, to a lesser extent. Tatum’s two-way versatility enabled so much of Boston’s success. I wrote this previously, but I feel a need to reiterate: the Celtics won this series despite Tatum’s shooting, but because of Tatum.

And yet, you can argue there was one other Celtic even more instrumental to their triumph.

1) Brad Stevens

This entire season has been one long coronation for Stevens, the 2023-24 NBA Executive of the Year and NBA champion.

“When I say I didn’t do anything, I mean I didn’t do anything,” a typically modest Stevens said in a post-championship interview with the Celtics broadcast crew. But that undersells the unbelievable job he did putting this juggernaut together.

We must acknowledge the efforts of Stevens’ predecessor, Danny Ainge, who drafted both Jays and laid the groundwork for this title team. But Stevens’ masterful work created the deepest, most well-rounded roster in memory. He re-acquired Al Horford, traded for Derrick White, upgraded from Marcus Smart to Jrue Holiday (an on-court and locker-room upgrade, despite what people may think), and added Kristaps Porziņģis. He nailed plenty of little things, too, like signing Payton Pritchard to a low-cost extension before he’d proven himself worthy.

Stevens also deserves credit for acting decisively with the thorny Ime Udoka situation, replacing coach Udoka with the strange, brilliant Mazzulla. He then worked with Mazzulla to find only players that worked in the coach’s schemes, prioritizing shooting (sorry, Robert Williams!) and defense (see ya, Malcolm Brogdon!) above all else.

It’s a testament to Stevens that the Celtics won the Finals with an MVP who averaged fewer than 21 points per game, an All-NBAer who shot 39% from the field for the series, and a seven-foot unicorn who only had one fully healthy game (and that after a five-week injury absence, too). It’s wild to say this, but I genuinely believe the Celtics would have won this series in the absence of any single player besides Tatum. No NBA team has close to the amount of quality and depth throughout the rotation that Boston possesses.

The best part? Thanks to Stevens, this Celtics team should be able to run it back at least one more year. We might be writing the same article in June of 2025!

Congratulations to the Boston Celtics and all their fans. With one championship in hand and plausible dreams of another, it will be a lovely summer.