The NBA Finals earlier this summer featured a trio of Blue Devils as former Duke basketball star [autotag]Jayson Tatum[/autotag] won his first championship with the Boston Celtics. According to Tatum, fans shouldn’t be surprised if there’s more of the same next summer.
During a Wednesday night appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Tatum predicted that his Celtics would face the Dallas Mavericks again in the 2025 NBA Finals.
“It’s going to be a rematch,” Tatum told Fallon. “We’re going to play Dallas again.”
The Mavericks, whom Boston beat in five games during the championship series, featured former Blue Devils [autotag]Kyrie Irving[/autotag] and [autotag]Dereck Lively II[/autotag]. Irving, who won a ring with the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2016, averaged 22.1 points and 5.1 assists per game in the postseason while Lively put up 7.9 points and 7.4 rebounds as a rookie.
Tatum led the Celtics with 25.0 points, 9.7 rebounds, and 6.3 assists per game through the postseason en route to the title.
https://twitter.com/FallonTonight/status/1834085573050446266
The Mavericks reached the Finals as the fifth seed in the Western Conference last season, so this prediction likely banks on either Irving and superstar guard Luka Doncic taking a step forward as a duo with a full offseason under their belts or Lively emerging as an All-Star caliber big in year two. However, Dallas did beat the top-seeded Oklahoma City Thunder and third-seeded Minnesota Timberwolves to reach the championship series, so they proved their postseason mettle.