Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown have played 107 playoff games together since their respective arrivals in Boston. That’s more than a full NBA season.

A longtime star pairing like that is rare in the modern NBA, especially when it doesn’t produce the ultimate desired result of a championship. And as the Celtics’ headlining duo saw season after season after season end in either the Eastern Conference finals (four times for Brown, three for Tatum) or NBA Finals (the six-game loss to Golden State in 2022), calls to break them up intensified.

As did the pointed personal critiques. Tatum’s status as a true elite player was routinely questioned despite him making three straight All-NBA first teams. Media talkers argued Brown, snubbed from the All-NBA and All-Defense teams this season, didn’t deserve the record-setting $303 million contract he signed last summer. The two disliked each other, many a pundit claimed, despite clear evidence to the contrary.

On Monday, their patience — Brown’s, Tatum’s and the storied franchise’s — was rewarded.

They were the two best players on the floor in the NBA Finals clincher at TD Garden, combining for 52 points, 17 assists, 16 rebounds and four steals as Boston routed the Dallas Mavericks 106-88 to claim its long-awaited first championship since 2008.

“We’ve been through a lot,” Brown said. “We’ve been playing together for seven years now. We’ve been through a lot, the losses, the expectations. 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. To get to this point and share that experience with JT is just awesome.”

Brown was voted NBA Finals MVP, edging out Tatum, who led the Celtics in points, rebounds and assists in both the five-game series and the full playoff run. He immediately shouted out his co-star and later said the award could have gone to anyone on Boston’s roster. Tatum said they wouldn’t have cared either way.

“The main goal for us was to win a championship,” Tatum said. “We didn’t care who got Finals MVP. I know that I need him through this journey and he needs me. So, you know, it was great to see him have that moment and share that moment with him. I’m extremely happy for him. Well-deserved. That was big-time. He earned that.”

With the NBA’s deepest roster around them, masterfully assembled by head coach-turned-front office shot-caller Brad Stevens, Tatum and Brown spearheaded one of the most dominant seasons in league history.

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The Celtics were dominant on both ends of the floor during their 64-win regular season — their net rating was tied for third-best ever, trailing only two peak-Jordan Chicago Bulls squads — then blitzed through the playoffs, winning 16 of 19 games and 10 of those by double digits.

All the while, the two headliners — drafted third overall in 2016 and 2017 — played with maturity and unselfishness forged by their previous postseason failures. Two of Brown’s three highest single-game assist totals in his playoff career came in these NBA Finals. Tatum dished out double-digit assists in two of the four wins over Dallas, the first time he’d ever done that multiple times in a playoff series.

They also scored 53.3% of Boston’s points over their final two victories, trading runs while Dallas’ top two of Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving struggled to keep pace.

“I don’t think those two ever had doubt in each other,” Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla said on ESPN late Monday night. “I think it was just a matter of using the experiences, the pain, the successes that they’ve been through to continue to grow as individual players and continue to grow as people.

“The two of those guys were determined, they’re both very selfless and they were willing to do whatever it took to win. It looked different each and every night, but every night, they did something different to impact winning.”

Tatum and Brown’s long, shared quest for their first title is over. But their reign of kings of the NBA could be just beginning.

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Brown’s mega-deal runs through 2029. Tatum should soon sign an even richer one, as he’s now eligible for a five-year, $315 million extension. All five Celtics starters are signed through at least next season, as are their top three reserves, if you include Sam Hauser’s team option.

“Hopefully it’s a burden off of (Tatum’s and Brown’s) shoulders,” said Jrue Holiday, the veteran guard who served as Boston’s do-it-all glue guy. “But another burden is doing it again.”

Brown, decked out in NBA champions gear with the Bill Russell Finals MVP trophy on the table next to him, said he’s already looking forward to that challenge.

“The doubters, they may be quiet now, but they will be back,” he said. “They will be back next year with something to say. I’ll embrace that moment the same and get after it yet again.”