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Kevin McHale explains the change that allowed Celtics to win 18th title

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Kevin McHale explains the change that allowed Celtics to win 18th title

Kevin McHale explains the change that allowed Celtics to win 18th title
Kevin McHale was happy to see another Celtics team win a title earlier this month. (AP Photo/Stephan Savoia, File)

Kevin McHale is no stranger to hanging up banners on Causeway Street.

The Celtics legend and NBA Hall of Famer won three titles in Boston over his 13 seasons of pro basketball — earning seven All-Star nods and serving as a key cog on some of the best Celtics rosters to ever play on the parquet floor.

But the former star forward was the most recent Celtics great to tip his cap to Boston’s latest championship roster — saluting the 2023-24 Celtics for finally reaching the summit and winning the franchise’s 18th title.

During an appearance on SiriusXM NBA Radio, McHale stressed that the determining factor that finally put the Celtics over the top this postseason revolved around the growth of the team’s top players.

“I thought (Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown) matured a lot,” McHale told co-hosts Frank Isola and Brian Scalabrine.

After several rough stretches during Boston’s failed playoff run in 2023, Brown was a force down the stretch for the Celtics this spring — winning both Eastern Conference Finals MVP and NBA Finals MVP on basketball’s highest stage.

Even though Tatum trudged through an extended shooting slump (38.8 percent) during the NBA Finals against Dallas, he still found ways to positively impact the game — averaging 7.8 rebounds and 7.2 assists per contest over the five-game series.

“(Tatum) just made passes and I was like, ‘Wow, all right. So you’re playing the flow of the game,’” McHale said. “You’re not playing for your numbers, you’re not playing for all those things. You’re playing for the flow of the game, and the flow of the game just dictates where the ball rolls.

“And I thought Brown and Tatum finally got to the point of not playing the numbers, ‘I gotta get my numbers. I gotta do this. I gotta do that.’ They just played flow basketball. I was just so happy and proud of those guys.”

Both Tatum and Brown elevated their respective games in 2024 to help the Celtics finally seize their sought-after 18th title. Their next mission will be to win back-to-back championships — a feat that the Celtics have not achieved since winning a pair of titles in 1968 and 1969.

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