C You in the Finals: New York Knicks’ Rivals Clinch East

Some ducks have all the luck, and they just happen to be rivals of the New York Knicks.

Derrick White’s last-minute triple broke a late tie and allowed the Boston Celtics to earn a 105-102 victory over the Indiana Pacers in Game 4 of the Eastern Conference Finals on Monday night. The win moves the Knicks’ division rivals to a four-game sweep and an NBA Finals berth, Boston’s second in the last three seasons. The Celtics will go for their 18th championship (seeking to break a record shared with the Los Angeles Lakers) in their 23rd Finals appearance.

Though the Celtics earned the four-game sweep (the ECF’s first since Cleveland ousted Atlanta in 2015), the upset-minded Pacers did not make it easy: three of the four games were decided by five points or less. Indiana led by as much as nine in their final period on Monday but were held off the board entirely over the final 3:33, allowing White to launch his heroic heave from the corner. With the win, the Celtics indirectly avenged the Knicks, who fell to the Pacers in the Eastern Conference Semifinals.

Jaylen Brown paced the Celtics with 29 points while Jayson Tatum had a 26-point, 13-rebound double-double. Boston completed the sweep sans the services of former Knick Kristaps Porzingis, who has missed each of the last 10 games with a calf injury.

The Celtics will now await the winner of the Western Conference Finals, where the Dallas Mavericks have a chance to complete a sweep of their own against the Minnesota Timberwolves on Tuesday night (8:30 p.m. ET, TNT). Boston will host Game 1 of the 2024 NBA Finals on Thursday, June 6.

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