DALLAS — Jayson Tatum remembers how it felt: being just five minutes away from a 3-1 lead in his first NBA Finals … only to watch Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green lead a 17-3 closing kick to steal Game 4, home-court advantage and, eventually, the championship.
“We learned from our mistakes,” Tatum said Wednesday, two years removed from that lesson, after his Celtics took a 3-0 lead in the 2024 NBA Finals. “We learned from a team at the time that was better than us — that had been there and been over that hump, and mentally tougher at the time.