Moments after helping the Boston Celtics capture the franchise’s 18th NBA championship banner, Jaylen Brown was awarded the Bill Russell trophy after being named the most valuable player of the NBA Finals. Brown graciously accepted the trophy from commissioner Adam Silver. Then, he gave a thoughtful and self-effacing remark.

“I share this with my brothers and my partner in crime Jayson Tatum,” said Brown, who has been playing alongside Tatum for seven seasons in Boston and both have absorbed a ton of criticism following three losses in the conference finals, including last year’s disappointing Game 7 loss at TD Garden to the Miami Heat.

“These last seven years have been a roller coaster, up and down. I had to listen to all the s*** that people said about me,” Tatum said.

Celtics general manager Brad Stevens had full faith in the resolve of his two superstars. He trusted that they’ll rebound from the playoff loss to the Heat and come back the following year with a vengeance. And they sure did.

Tatum and Brown played the entire 2023-24 season with massive chips on their shoulders and took out all their frustrations on the rest of the league. The Celtics blitzed through the regular season with a league-best 64 wins and lost just three games in the postseason.

“We’ve been through a lot, the losses, the expectations,” Brown told reporters. “The media have said all different types of things: We can’t play together, we are never going to win. We heard it all. But we just blocked it out, and we just kept going. I trusted him. He trusted me. And we did it together.”

Every championship team over the last four decades have had a great 1-2 punch. Tatum and Brown are the latest dynamic duo to etch their names on basketball lore. Where do Tatum and Brown rank on OneManFastBreak’s annual top-five list? Take a look at this year’s OMFB Furious Five.

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Each year OneManFastBreak.net ranks the five best players in the NBA. The OMFB Furious Five pays homage to the five styles of Chinese martial arts: snake, crane, monkey, praying mantis, and tiger.

The ranking system is based on one man’s opinion and does not follow or conform to any standard format, with more emphasis placed on how each player and their respective teams performed in the postseason. Stars are born during the regular season, but legends are made in the playoffs.

In 2023, OMFB’s Furious Five featured Jimmy Butler (5), Stephen Curry (4), Joel Embiid (3), Giannis Antetokounmpo (2), Nikola Jokic (1).

Without further ado, here are the five best basketball players in the world.

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5-JAYLEN BROWN
Boston Celtics, Guard-Forward

Brown wasn’t named to the All-NBA team or the All-Defensive team during the 2023-24 season. Think about that for a minute. The MVP of the 2024 NBA Finals and Eastern Conference finals MVP wasn’t voted on first-team, second-team or third-team All-NBA. Also, he was not named to first-team or second-team All-Defense.

To say that it was a snub was a major understatement. Brown is without a doubt one of the best two-way players in the NBA. He belongs in the top 15 on offense and top 10 on defense. He left little doubt about his status with one of the all-time great performances in the 2024 playoffs.

Against the Indiana Pacers in the conference finals, Brown averaged 29.8 points in the Celtics’ four-game sweep. Brown hit the series-defining shot in Game 1 when he drained a corner 3-pointer to send the game into overtime where Boston took control. From that point, the Pacers could never regain control of the series.

Against the Mavericks in the NBA Finals, Brown took on the defensive challenge of guarding the Dallas Mavericks’ all-world point guard Luka Doncic. He made Doncic earn every point and held the league’s best playmaker to 5.6 assists and 24% shooting from 3-point range. Brown could have easily gloated in front of the media when he had the mic during the postgame Finals pressers. But he took the high road and let his performances speak for themselves.

4-GIANNIS ANTETOKOUNMPO
Milwaukee Bucks, Forward

A calf strain forced Giannis Antetokounmpo to watch his Bucks get eliminated by the Indiana Pacers in the first round of the playoffs.

The two-time NBA MVP felt that he let his teammates down by not being on the court as the Pacers took full advantage of a Giannis-less Bucks squad and won the series in six games. Giannis vowed to do everything in his power to get his body right for the next season.

Antetokounmpo told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that missing the final 22 days of the Bucks season was one of the more difficult stretches of his 11-year career.

“I was trying to push myself and push myself and push myself to get to a place where maybe I can’t check the boxes, but maybe I can even go out there and help, but in our opinion it was not safe for me to be out there because I couldn’t run full speed,” Antetokounmpo said.

Prior to his injury, Giannis put together another outstanding season, averaging 30.4 points while shooting 61.1% from the field. The Bucks remain one of the top teams in the East, but they need a healthy Giannis to compete for a championship.

3-LUKA DONCIC
Dallas Mavericks, Guard

Doncic had one of best season’s of his young career, leading the league in scoring (33.9), finishing third in the MVP voting, and authoring the signature moment of the regular season when he dropped 73 points against the Atlanta Hawks. It was the fourth-highest point total in NBA history and trails only Wilt Chamberlain (100 and 78) and Kobe Bryant (81).

Luka was the driving force behind the Mavericks’ impressive run to the NBA Finals. It was the franchise’s first appearance in the Finals since Dirk Nowitzki led them there in 2011.

But Doncic’s body couldn’t hold up through the entire playoff grind as he physically struggled down the stretch with a plethora of injuries. He received a pain-killing injection ahead of Game 2 in the Finals and played through much of the playoffs with a sprained knee.

Doncic didn’t make any excuses when he was asked about his ailments.

“It doesn’t matter if I was hurt, how much was I hurt,” he told reporters following Dallas’ 106-88 loss in Game 5 at TD Garden. “I was out there. I tried to play, but I didn’t do enough.”

Some of basketball’s greatest players, including Nowitzki, lost the first time they made the NBA Finals. Nowitzki lost to the Miami Heat in 2006, but learned from that loss and got over the hump in 2011. Doncic will certainly take the painful lessons from his Finals loss and learn from them when he gets another shot. He understands that he has to stop complaining to the referees, play better defense, and get in better shape.

2-JAYSON TATUM
Boston Celtics, Forward

Tatum let his emotions pour out after the Celtics won the NBA title. He understood what it meant for him being the face of a storied franchise. He can now join the table reserved for Celtics greats such as Bob Cousy, Bill Russell, John Havlicek, Dave Cowens, Larry Bird, and Kevin Garnett. Winning an NBA title was a career-defining accomplishment for Tatum. “All the sacrifice was worth it,” he told reporters.

Tatum is generally known for his ability to put the ball in the basket. And he’s darn good at it. But critics were quick to point out his flaws after losing to Steph Curry’s Golden State Warriors in the 2022 NBA Finals and to Jimmy Butler’s Miami Heat in the 2023 Eastern Conference finals. Many pundits started doubting Tatum’s ability to lead a team and be able to handle the pressure of being a superstar. Even Mavericks coach Jason Kidd took a swipe at Tatum by telling reporters that Jaylen Brown was the Celtics’ best player.

Tatum absorbed all the blows and kept on grinding. He added layers to game to become more of a complete player. His play-making skills were on full display during the 2024 NBA Finals. Despite struggling from the field (38.8%), he impacted the game in multiple ways. He led Boston in rebounds (7.8) and assists (7.2), and took on the challenge of defending his position as the team’s primary 4-man.

“I think he makes everyone’s life easier,” Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla said about Tatum. “One because of who he is as a person, the type of character he has. I think your franchise player has to be a cornerstone of what you do. It starts with his high character, just the way he carries himself as a person, as a dad, as a teammate.”

Tatum may not have collected any hardware during the 2023-24 season, but doesn’t need trophies to prove his greatness. He was Boston’s best player all season, leading team in scoring (26.9) and rebounding (8.1). Tatum could have easily been named Eastern Conference finals MVP after averaging 30.3 points, 10.3 rebounds, 6.3 assists in sweeping the Pacers. By comparison, Brown averaged 29.8 points, 5.0 rebounds and 3.0 assists.

Tatum became the sixth player since 1980 to lead his team in points, rebounds and assists in the playoffs while winning a title. The other five were Larry Bird, Hakeem Olajuwon, Tim Duncan, LeBron James, and Nikola Jokic. That’s some pretty good company there.

And now, the No. 1 player in the world. Drum roll please . . .

1-NIKOLA JOKIC
Denver Nuggets, Center

Nikola Jokic has been so consistently brilliant that he could have easily been named MVP four straight years. The known as The Joker won his third regular-season MVP in four years, becoming just the ninth player in NBA history to win at least three MVPs, joining Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (six), Michael Jordan (five), Bill Russell (five), Wilt Chamberlain (four), LeBron James (four), Larry Bird (three), Magic Johnson (three) and Moses Malone (three).

Jokic ranked 10th in points (26.4), fourth in rebounds (12.4) and third in assists (9.0) while missing just three regular season games. He became the second player to have at least 2,000 points, 900 rebounds and 700 assists in a season, joining Oscar Robertson who pulled off the feat in 1962.

Behind the Serbian big man, the Denver Nuggets won 57 wins and earned the No. 2 seed in the Western Conference. In a highly anticipated matchup against LeBron James and Anthony Davis in the first round of the playoffs, Nuggets eliminated the L.A. Lakers in five games with Jokic averaging nearly a triple-double (28.2 points, 16.2 rebounds, 9.8 points). The Jokic-Davis matchup pitted the league’s best offensive weapon against the league’s best defender. Even though the series went just five games, it shaved plenty of skin off the Nuggets.

In the conference semifinals, the Nuggets were stretched to the limit by the upstart Minnesota Timberwolves. The T-Wolves pulled off the improbable, winning Game 7 on Denver’s home court. Jokic did all he could to push the Nuggets forward, but he simply ran out of gas and got worn down by Minnesota’s trio of big men. Nuggets head coach Michael Malone said his team looked “dead tired” and blamed fatigue for blowing a double-digit lead in Game 7 against the T-Wolves. The Nuggets’ starting unit of Jamal Murray, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Michael Porter Jr., Aaron Gordon and Jokic played 958 minutes together in the regular season. That’s more than any other five-man lineup in the last six NBA seasons.

Time will tell where Jokic will land on the list of the greats. If his career ended today, his legacy is secure and his spot in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame is nearly guaranteed. He now wears the crown once held by Kareem, Russell, Wilt, Moses, Hakeem, Shaq, and Duncan as the game’s best and most dominant big man.

But Springfield can wait. The Joker still has plenty of greatness left in him, and he’s far from satisfied winning just one championship.

Eventually, some team is going to break the streak.

In the history of the NBA, when teams take a 3-0 lead in a best-of-seven playoff series, the likelihood of having a shot at winning the series is about as improbable as correctly choosing all six numbers in the lottery. It’s a 1 in 13,983,816 chance of winning.

The 2023 Boston Celtics looked at those odds and said, “So, you’re saying there’s a chance.”

Boston won the equivalent of nailing five of the six numbers in the Mega Millions jackpot and came within 48 minutes of pulling off a playoff comeback for the ages. The Celtics became the first NBA team since 2003 to dig out of an 0-3 hole and force a Game 7. It wasn’t just any series. It was the Eastern Conference finals.

However, like the previous 150 teams that tried to break the cycle, Boston came up short as it got destroyed by the Miami Heat 103-84 in Game 7 at TD Garden Arena.

It was a roller-coaster ride for the Celtics. In a matter of seven days, they went from being massive underachievers to a team on the brink of returning to the NBA Finals only to have it snatched away in one swoop after a shockingly poor performance in front of their loyal fans.

“We failed. I failed. We let the whole city down,” Celtics All-NBA forward Jaylen Brown said during his postgame media availability.

When the Heat took a 3-0 series lead in the conference finals, basketball fans and media pundits were tossing all sorts of narratives around the Celtics and none of them were good.
Talking heads were destroying first-year Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla for being too green and not meeting the moment. Brown’s name was being tossed around in trade scenarios, and the old ghosts that haunted superstar forward Jayson Tatum during last year’s NBA Finals seem to have popped up again.

Seven days later, Mazzulla’s job was no longer in danger. Brown could be in line for a lucrative contract extension and Tatum rediscovered his MVP form.

Once the Celtics decided to step on the gas, it became a series. It shouldn’t come as a surprise the Celtics beat the Heat in seven games. The Celtics finished with the second-best record in the regular season and were one of the betting favorites to reach the NBA Finals. The big surprise was how Boston found itself down 3-0 to an eighth-seeded Miami squad that barely made it out of the play-in tournament.

It’s unfortunate that the Miami Heat, a proud franchise with championship pedigree, found itself on the edge of a historic collapse. A loss to the Celtics are being up 3-0 in the series would have been a permanent stain on the franchise. It would have been a stain on Erik Spoelstra’s impressive coaching résumé, and it would have been a huge stain on the résumés of Miami two superstars — Jimmy Butler and Bam Adebayo.

The Heat wouldn’t even be in the conference finals without Butler and Adebayo. They are the heart and soul of a Miami squad that entered the postseason as massive underdogs. The Heat earned the eighth and final spot in the East playoffs by beating the Chicago Bulls in the play-in tournament. The Heat then pulled off an improbable upset in the first round after knocking off the top-seeded Milwaukee Bucks in five games. That upset now feels like an eternity.

Butler and Adebayo faded on the back end of the Boston series, as both looked fatigued.

Butler was in prime Playoff Jimmy form in the first two games of the series, scoring 35 and 27 points and playing lockdown defense on Tatum and Brown. But since then, Butler has struggled to find his shooting stroke. He scored 16 points in Miami’s Game 3 win at home, and things got progressively worse as the series extended. He was 9-for-21 from the field in a Game 4 loss. He took only 10 shots and finished with 14 points in a Game 5 loss. He was 5-for-21 in a Game 6 loss.

Adebayo also got off to great start in the first two games in Boston, taking full advantage of single coverage and doing plenty of damage in the paint (42 points and 25 rebounds). But since then, he has gone ice cold from field (13, 10, 16, 11 points) and hasn’t been as dominant on the glass. In Game 6, Bam was 4-for-16 from the field and couldn’t secure the pivotal rebound that led to Derrick White’s game-winning tip-in as time expired for a stunning 104-103 win.

The shooting struggles for Bam and Butler spilled over into Game 7, but both summoned enough strength and energy to impact the game on both ends and lead the Heat to a win. Miami became just the sixth team in 28 tries to win at the Garden in a Game 7. It was pure heart and determination, which embodies the Heat culture.

There were three key reasons why Miami knocked off Boston and advanced to the franchise’s seventh NBA Finals: Spoeltra’s coaching maneuvers, Heat role players stepping up, and Tatum injuring his left ankle in Game 7.

Spoelstra made all the proper adjustments throughout the series and thoroughly outcoached the rookie Mazzulla. Each time Mazzulla made a move, Spo had a counter. Mazzulla — who at 34 is the NBA’s youngest coach — and his staff couldn’t solve the Heat’s puzzling zone defense. Instead of attack the seams of the zone, Boston settled for contested 3-point shots. Over their final two games of the series, the Celtics shot a combined 16-for-77 from 3, including an abysmal 9-for-42 in Game 7.

Mazzulla’s big adjustment in the series was inserting White into the starting lineup to give the Celtics another shooter and ball handler. Spo countered that move by dropping 34-year-old Kevin Love out of the rotation and sliding super-sub Caleb Martin into the starting lineup. Spo wasn’t only beating Mazzulla with X’s and O’s, but he also was winning the motivational game. Moments after the Heat’s crushing defeat in Game 6, Spoelstra went on the podium and declared: “We wish we could tip this thing off right now. Right now! We want to tip this thing off and let’s play another 48 minutes. But we’ll wait another 48 hours and do this thing in Boston.”

Miami certainly did its thing in Boston in Game 7, and it was the Heat role players who got it started. Gabe Vincent, Max Strus, and Duncan Robinson played outstanding basketball in Game 7, but Martin absolutely played out of his mind. Martin, who came within one vote of winning the conference finals MVP trophy, was sensational in Game 7, scoring 26 points in 45 minutes and making 11 of his 16 shots from the field, including 4-for-6 from 3-point range.

“If you’re a real competitor, it’s in your soul, and that’s what Caleb is. He’s a competitor,” Spoelstra said about Martin, who averaged 19.3 points while shooting 60% from the field and 49% from 3-point range in the conference finals. Martin has never topped 9.6 points per game prior to this postseason and is a career 36% 3-point shooter.

The final big nail on the Boston coffin was Tatum’s ankle injury. He twisted his left ankle 26 seconds into Game 7 and was never the same. He injured it on the first play of the game when he collided with Vincent near the basket and landed awkwardly on Vincent’s foot. Tatum tried to play through the sprain, but his mobility was compromised and the limp got progressively worse as the game wore on. Tatum finished with 14 points on 5-for-13 shooting from the field, easily his worst game of the series and possibly the worst game of his young playoff career.

“It swelled up and it was just frustrating that I was kind of like a shell of myself,” said Tatum, who had a noticeable limp as he addressed the media. “It was tough to move. Just frustrating. Especially it happening on the first play.”

Tatum had averaged a series-high 27.2 points through the first six games.

Overcoming a 3-0 deficit in the postseason is extremely rare in major professional team sports. It has been done four times in the NHL (1942 Toronto Maple Leafs, 1975 New York Islanders, 2010 Philadelphia Flyers, and 2014 Los Angeles Kings), and it’s only been done once in MLB (2004 Boston Red Sox).

The NBA remains the only major sports league not to experience it, but it’s getting close.