![Tom Brady Celtics hype video]()
As somebody who brought six Super Bowls to the greater Massachusetts area, Tom Brady knows a thing or two about what a championship team looks like. You can say that the Boston Celtics had one of the most ridiculous cakewalks to an NBA Finals berth in the history of basketball. It's not a dissimilar argument to how Brady's New England Patriots benefited for years from an awful AFC East and were virtually guaranteed to host a playoff game, since they could basically sleepwalk to something like a 5-1 divisional record.
The same counterpoint could be made in both those instances, though: The C's and Pats aren't going to apologize for who they were scheduled to play against. Nor should they. To circle back to what was stated in the lede, if Brady is confident enough to back this Boston team — whose nucleus hasn't technically won anything of consequence — I'd be very scared as a Dallas Mavericks fan right now.
Brady's silky voiceover work in this NBA Finals hype video released by the Celtics shows the folly of every opponent's fan base chanting, "WE WANT BOSTON!" only to be annihilated by them in the postseason.
https://twitter.com/mikekadlick/status/1798516096372519285
It eludes me as to why fans kept wanting the smoke from a Celtics squad who, regular-season frequent lack of competitive intensity aside, still managed to lap the rest of the NBA with a 64-18 record and +11.4 point differential. That's consistent dominance on a staggering scale.
Meanwhile, the Mavs had to sweat out a highly competitive playoff race out West, and were only one game away in the standings from facing the Minnesota Timberwolves in the first round. Would Dallas have topped their Western Conference Finals opponent if they squared off in Round 1? It's really hard to say. I feel like the Mavs didn't really find their stride until the Conference Finals. They lost Game 1s to the Clippers and the Thunder. Needed six games to close out the Clips, and they were one point away from a Game 7 back in OKC.
Credit Luka Doncic, Kyrie Irving and Dallas' evidently underrated supporting cast for their collective resilience to bounce back from multiple series-opening defeats to get to this stage. I don't want to take away from what they've accomplished. At the same time, they were way out of the West's three-way race for the No. 1 seed between the Thunder, Wolves, and Nuggets. Boston ran away with the East crown — a full 14 games ahead of the Knicks.
Tip of the hat to my old colleague Greenie at Barstool for this documentation of Phil Jackson's 40-20 rule, which states that an NBA championship team must win 40 games before they lose 20 in any given season to have a real chance at a title. History has proven that to be true, with literally only four full exceptions since 1980.
https://twitter.com/StoolGreenie/status/1668638676610605056
The Mavs lost their 20th game with only 24 wins in the books; the Celtics obviously didn't reach the 20-loss threshold. Brady is a student of the game in any given sport. He's certainly well aware of Boston sports lore. I'd say there's a 95% chance he knows of this 40-20 rule since, you know, Phil Jackson won
eleven NBA championships as a coach and two as a player.
The Zen Master's Lakers even topped the Celtics to win his last Larry O'Brien Trophy in 2010.
If you're Dallas, with that much of a track record
and Tom Brady are stacked against you, you might be in trouble. A final counter to finish this off, however: If Luka somehow pulls this off and Kyrie gets pseudo-revenge on Boston with a Finals upset, I have my doubts that this Celtics group of Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown and Co. will ever recover.
