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Andrew Callahan: Celtics' championship parade brings out the best in Boston

Andrew Callahan, Boston Herald on

Published in Basketball

This was Boston at its best.

A town that’s got your back. A town that doesn’t give up. A town of sports and history that recognizes the moments when the two intersect, and basks in them.

Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown are champions now. Over the last seven years, we watched them grow, watched greatness grow, in the Garden; superstars learning to walk, stumble and then run to a title.

There is nothing better, nor more gratifying in sports. That is, except the parade that follows.

A reason to skip work, day drink and dance. To celebrate your franchise players up close, toss a basketball toward them you hope they might sign. And sign they did, for the little genius who duck-taped a sharpie to his ball and flung it to different duck boats Friday.

Joe Mazzulla was the first to sign, the head of the parade and once much-maligned coach of the Celtics. But where are his critics now?

 

Pulling apart every post-game quote with a bizarre reference? Wondering when he might take that timeout? No, they’re quiet; staring at the fact a 35-year-old cultivated buy-in from two of the NBA’s biggest superstars and a roster with six total All-Stars on it, then led them to a title.

Not that Mazzulla is any less of his zany self. A day or two after walking the Larry O’Brien trophy around the North End (perhaps, not coincidentally, home to the second-most famous scene from “The Town,” his favorite movie) Mazzulla leapt onto the roof of a duck boat, then later out a window of that same duck boat and finally back into the boat — all on a torn meniscus.

He appears unbreakable. Just like his team.

Over four playoff rounds, Tatum and Brown relentlessly barreled into the paint for layups or kickouts to open 3-point shots; Jrue Holiday and Derrick White picked pockets on defense; Al Horford rained 3s, the poison all of Boston’s opponents picked to swallow, and died by — in the case of Indiana.

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