The Boston Celtics’ bold Championship gamble? A trade they didn’t make

But with the Celtics up three games to none against the Dallas Mavericks in the NBA Finals—a lead no team in playoff history has ever relinquished—the smartest move in basketball looks like the one Stevens didn’t make.

Boston’s pair of All-Star forwards Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown—collectively known as “The Jays”—had been the subjects of years of speculation. They’d gone toes-to-toe with LeBron James in their first taste of postseason action together in 2018, and they’d suffered an embarrassing defeat to the No. 8 seed Miami Heat in last year’s playoffs. They were called overrated and incompatible. Fans demanded that Stevens deal one of them away.

Now, if history is any indication, the most argued-over tandem in basketball is about to become something else: NBA champions.

In a Game 3 victory Wednesday night, The Jays joined forces in near-perfect synchronicity. Tatum, the smoother outside shooter, scored 31 points. Brown, the high-flying athlete, scored 30.

“We’ve been in those positions, and we’ve lost,” Brown said Wednesday, after the Celtics nearly surrendered a 21-point lead before holding on, 106-99. “It was great to overcome that with my brother, Jayson, and with our team. That was special.”

This time a year ago, the Tatum’s and Brown pairing looked a lot less special. In a Game 7 loss against Miami in the Eastern Conference Finals, Tatum turned his ankle and played ineffectively, stoking claims that he shrunk in big moments. Brown, never the tidiest dribbler, fumbled and stumbled his way into eight turnovers.

In a sport in which championships often go to the league’s very best player—Jordan landed six, LeBron has four—not-quite-superstars can land a team in purgatory: good enough to get deep in the playoffs, flawed enough never to win the whole thing. But Stevens insisted, repeatedly, that his in-house duo was capable of getting it done.

This year’s Finals have shown the simple advantage that The Jays have, and that Stevens recognised: There are two of them. Dallas’ Luka Doncic has been the series’ top offensive player, a dynamo of shoemaking and passing, but Brown and Tatum have been able to attack the Mavericks in tandem. On defence, they have taken turns guarding Doncic, using their combined 13 feet, 2 inches of height to close his driving lanes and sap his energy.

On offence, they can simply swing the ball to whichever of them is guarded by the worse defender—often Doncic himself—or whoever currently has the hot hand. In Games 1 and 2, Brown supplied the gaudier stat lines, scoring 22 and 21 points while Tatum struggled to find his shot. On Wednesday, each player was in form: Brown soared in for dunks, Tatum laced four 3-pointers.

Early in the Finals, Dallas coach Jason Kidd attempted to play mind games with the Jays. After Game 1, Kidd called Brown their “best player,” revving up once again the popular Beantown debate about Tatum and Brown—and one that the two players themselves have sometimes been drawn into. “I don’t never win s—,” Brown said after he, not Tatum, was awarded the Eastern Conference Finals MVP last month. (Brown is presently the highest-paid player in the NBA, but Tatum could leapfrog his salary with a contract extension this summer.)

But by this year’s Finals—their first time on the championship stage since their 2022 loss to the Golden State Warriors—the Jays had heard every gibe and complaint, and were immune. “We understand that people try to drive a wedge between us. I guess it’s a smart thing to do,” Tatum said of Kidd’s comment.

“But we’ve been in this position for many years of guys trying to divide us, say that one of us should be traded or one is better than the other. So it’s not our first time at the rodeo.”

One play from Wednesday’s game perfectly summarised the silliness of the debate over which player was superior to the other. Early in the third quarter, Tatum dribbled near the basket and drew a double-team. So he swung the ball out, and it touched three pairs of Celtics hands in two seconds—the last of these belonging to Brown, who drained a 3-pointer from the corner.

It wasn’t a flashy individual highlight. It won’t win either player any barroom arguments about top-five status leaguewide. But it was a perfect team play: one Jay efficiently creating a shot for the other. And those debates matter a lot less than a championship.

-- The Wall Street Journal