BOSTON — The Celtics still have to prove it.
That’s been the sentiment surrounding this team, the narrative, because they’ve been so close for so long that you forget Boston’s Core-2 is only in its mid-20s. You doubt these Celtics because they’ve never done it before.
And that first championship is always the hardest.
But after watching them dismantle the Mavericks in Thursday’s 107-89 Game 1 cakewalk, there are good reasons to bet this is the year that Larry O’Brien returns to Beantown. The Celtics have been stuck on 17 titles for 16 years. They lost the 2022 Finals. They choked away the 2023 conference finals to the Miami Heat, and, along the way, established a reputation — particularly Jayson Tatum — of folding when it really matters.
There were concerns it would happen again Thursday. Boston’s 29-point lead dwindled to eight in the third quarter.
But this time, the Celtics rose to the occasion instead of collapsing. Their lead ballooned to 19 to start the fourth quarter.
Game over.
Jason Kidd waved the white flag with five minutes left, removing his starters. It wasn’t a good way to start the NBA Finals for Dallas.
The Celtics didn’t need Tatum to do much because of the depth they built around him. In fact, Tatum only scored 16 points on 6-for-16 shooting. It was the rest of the roster that carried Boston in front of a raucous crowd.
Give credit to Brad Stevens for building the most complete rotation in the NBA. And their dominant night started with a familiar face to Knicks fans: Kristaps Porzingis.
Somewhere in his Montana lakehouse, or wherever he’s dwelling these days, Phil Jackson could’ve been feeling good about his highest draft pick. It was Jackson’s best move as president of the Knicks, way back in 2015. Sure, he also screwed it up in the end. He tried to trade Porzingis. But Jackson was responsible for bringing Porzingis into the NBA.
And on Thursday, the Latvian scored 20 points with three blocks in just 21 minutes, injecting the home team with all the energy and production necessary to dominate Game 1.
Porzingis had missed 10 straight games and over five weeks with a calf injury, and his effectiveness was probably the biggest question heading into Game 1. In somewhat of a surprise, the Celtics brought him off the bench, sticking with Al Horford as the starting center.
It worked out. Porzingis found an immediate rhythm, as if the layoff was helpful to his burst. The Celtics held a 37-20 lead after the first quarter. The evening quickly developed into a green-and-white parade.
Kyrie Irving, meanwhile, was greeted with boos, as expected, and struggled mightily with just 12 points on 6-for-19 shooting. Outside, they were selling a shirt with the message “F— Kyrie,” and another with an image of Irving’s face with a clown nose. While with the Nets, Irving took those things very personally. He provoked much of it. He threw up a middle finger once. He stepped on the leprechaun.
But the Irving in Dallas is a lot different than the Irving in Brooklyn. He’s more focused on basketball, less on the other nonsense that made his Nets tenure an utter disaster. And while it’s now easy to blame the no-accountability environment fostered by Sean Marks and Joe Tsai, almost all that stuff in Brooklyn was on Irving. At every turn, he found new and innovative ways to not play basketball — whether it was attending a party at the start of the pandemic, taking a leave of absence, refusing the vaccine, taking another leave of absence and, most disturbingly, promoting an anti-Semitic film. The list is extensive.
Talk to people about Irving’s mindset during that time and a picture emerges that he didn’t care much about basketball. His interests were elsewhere. There were even suggestions Irving would retire soon. He certainly gave up a lot of money while with the Nets. Millions upon millions of dollars in endorsements and game checks.
But something clicked again this season with Dallas. With Irving, the skill is always a given. He’s a wizard with a basketball. It’s mostly about what’s going on upstairs.
“Maybe he was bored. Maybe the situation wasn’t where he liked it. The setting. Whoever was behind the scenes. All I know, he’s talented, he’s bright, and he can do whatever he wants to do on the basketball court. And he decided to do it,” Sandy Pyonin, a basketball coach and teacher for more than 50 years at a Jewish private school in West Orange, who also trained Irving personally through high school, told The Post. “And when he started playing defense — and focusing on that, on playing and winning, and maybe he just felt this is the time that he needed to let everybody know who he was.”
That reminder didn’t happen Thursday for Irving, though. Instead, Porzingis and the Celtics sent the message.
