2024 NBA Finals

The Boston Celtics won the 2024 NBA Finals, defeating the Dallas Mavericks four games to one to claim the franchise’s 18th championship — the most in league history, one clear of the Los Angeles Lakers. The series ran from June 6 to June 17, 2024, and ended with a Game 5 rout at TD Garden. Jaylen Brown, not co-star Jayson Tatum, was voted Finals MVP, closing a season in which Boston led the NBA wire to wire and then lost only three games across four playoff rounds.

Fast facts
Champion	Boston Celtics (4–1)
Runner-up	Dallas Mavericks
Dates	June 6–17, 2024
Venues	TD Garden, Boston; American Airlines Center, Dallas
Series result	Celtics won 4–1
Finals MVP	Jaylen Brown (Boston)
Reported audience	11.31 million average viewers on ABC

The setup

Boston arrived as the overwhelming favorite. The Celtics posted a league-best 64–18 regular-season record and rolled through the East, dispatching the Miami Heat and Cleveland Cavaliers in five games apiece before sweeping the Indiana Pacers in the Eastern Conference Finals. Head coach Joe Mazzulla’s team was built on volume three-point shooting and the regular season’s top-rated defense.

The core was homegrown — Tatum and Brown were drafted with picks that traced back to Boston’s 2013 trade that sent Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce to Brooklyn — but the 2023 offseason reshaped the supporting cast. Boston acquired Kristaps Porziņģis in a deal that moved on from longtime guard Marcus Smart, then landed veteran guard Jrue Holiday from Milwaukee for Malcolm Brogdon, Robert Williams III and two first-round picks. Holiday and Porziņģis gave the Tatum–Brown duo perimeter defense and floor spacing it had lacked. That roster carried a $184.2 million payroll and one of the NBA’s largest luxury-tax bills.

Dallas took a longer road. Seeded fifth in the West at 50–32, Luka Dončić and Kyrie Irving led upsets of the LA Clippers, the top-seeded Oklahoma City Thunder and the Minnesota Timberwolves, with midseason additions P.J. Washington and Daniel Gafford stabilizing the frontcourt under coach Jason Kidd.

How it happened

The Finals turned on Boston’s control of the first three games. In Game 1 the Celtics led wire to wire in a 107–89 win, with Porziņģis returning from a leg injury to score off the bench. Game 2 was tighter — Dallas rallied late before Boston closed out 105–98 behind a strong night from Holiday.

Boston then stole Game 3 in Dallas, 106–99, to seize a commanding 3–0 lead that no NBA team has ever overcome. The Mavericks avoided the sweep in emphatic fashion in Game 4, routing a disengaged Celtics side 122–84 — a 38-point margin that ranks among the largest in Finals history. Back at TD Garden for Game 5, Boston restored order and won 106–88, with Tatum posting 31 points, 11 assists and 8 rebounds and Brown adding 21 points to clinch the title and the MVP.

By the numbers

Game	Date	Score	Note
1	June 6, 2024	Celtics 107, Mavericks 89	Boston led wire to wire; Porziņģis back from injury
2	June 9, 2024	Celtics 105, Mavericks 98	Dallas rally falls short in Boston
3	June 12, 2024	Celtics 106, Mavericks 99	Boston takes a 3–0 series lead in Dallas
4	June 14, 2024	Mavericks 122, Celtics 84	Dallas avoids sweep; 38-point rout
5	June 17, 2024	Celtics 106, Mavericks 88	Tatum triple-double watch; Boston clinches

Per Basketball-Reference.

The record

• 1st NBA championships, all-time (Boston, 18)
• 1st Regular-season record, 2023-24 NBA (64–18)
• 2nd Winning percentage, Celtics franchise history (.792, 80–21 overall)

Per Basketball-Reference and NBA.com.

Honors

• 2024 NBA champions — Boston Celtics
• Bill Russell Finals MVP — Jaylen Brown
• Larry O'Brien Trophy (record 18th)
• Eastern Conference champions
• No. 1 overall seed (64–18)
• Joe Mazzulla — championship head coach

Per NBA.com.

The arguments

The lasting debate is whether the 2024 Celtics were a purpose-built superteam or a homegrown champion with veteran help. The superteam case rests on the balance sheet and the trade log: Boston paired two drafted All-Stars in Tatum and Brown with two more established players acquired specifically to win now, carried a $184.2 million payroll and a large luxury-tax bill, and was, per Sportico, on a path toward one of the most expensive rosters the league had seen. By that reading, the front office simply bought the final pieces.

The counterargument, argued at length by Yahoo Sports, is that the framing gets the timeline backward. Tatum and Brown were drafted and developed in Boston, not assembled through free-agent poaching, and the collective bargaining agreement’s punitive second-apron penalties made the roster financially unsustainable — the same rules that would soon force the title core apart. In that telling the 2024 Celtics were less a superteam than the last team the old economics allowed, killed by the new ones. Swipe Sports has tracked the aftermath in its Jaylen Brown coverage and in its reporting on how Boston’s analytics-first build was assembled.

Neither label settles the on-court verdict. Boston lost only three games in the entire postseason and never trailed in a series, a level of dominance that resists the asterisk some attach to the run.

Why it matters

The 2024 title moved the Celtics past the Lakers atop the NBA’s championship ledger, gave the Tatum–Brown era its defining line, and handed Brown a Finals MVP that reframed a career often measured against his co-star. It also became a case study in modern roster math: a team good enough to win a title comfortably, expensive enough that the league’s new rules would begin dismantling it almost immediately. However the superteam question is answered, the banner reads 18 — and for one June, Boston’s homegrown core and its bought-in veterans were the best team in basketball by a distance the scoreboard rarely showed.