Jaylen Brown and the Boston Celtics will begin defense of their NBA title Tuesday night when they host the New York Knicks. Charles Krupa/Associated Press

The Celtics will hang banner 18 on Tuesday night at the Garden. It will be a celebration four months in the making, the final tip of the cap to a team that brought the duck boats out of storage for the first rolling rally in Boston since the Patriots won the Super Bowl in 2019.

In most cities, that’s a very short span between championship parades, but here in the golden age of Boston sports, a 4 1/2-year wait felt like an eternity. We expect championships, and the Celtics have been our best hope the past few years.

The Patriots haven’t won a playoff game since that Super Bowl. The Red Sox have missed the playoffs three straight years and five of the last six. That’s a serious drought from a pair of teams that won a combined 10 titles in the last 23 seasons.

The Bruins have made regular playoff appearances in recent years but haven’t been past the second round since losing Game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals at home in 2019.

The Celtics begin the season forecast as the best team in the Eastern Conference, and are a favorite to win it all again. But a sale of the franchise looms, and you can’t help but wonder if a new owner wants to carry a payroll creeping its way toward a half-billion dollars.

Enjoy the celebration. We’ve gotten pretty good at these things. We’ve also learned the good times can be fleeting.

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Shohei Ohtani celebrates after the Dodgers beat the Mets in Game 6 of the NLCS on Sunday night in Los Angeles to earn a matchup with the Yankees in the World Series. Ashley Landis/Associated Press

It feels like a Yankees-Dodgers World Series was inevitable. While there will be the usual grousing about teams overspending to buy their way to a championship, there’s no denying the appeal of a showdown featuring Shohei Ohtani against Aaron Judge.

They are the two biggest and most marketable players in a sport that has had trouble promoting its stars in recent years. This is the exact type of matchup that will put baseball on top of sports pages across the country and top of the mind for even casual sports fans.

It’s not always about spending the most money, even for teams in New York and L.A. It’s about making the moves to give a team its best shot at winning. The Yankees did that in December when they traded for Juan Soto despite the fact he had only one year of team control remaining.

Sure enough, it was Soto hitting the three-run homer in the 10th inning Saturday night at the end of an epic playoff at-bat. Minutes later the Yankees won their first pennant in 15 years. No one in the Bronx is thinking about next year right now, but when this series ends they will have to. Soto, only 25, is going to land an epic contract that will be well north of $500 million. If the Yankees want to keep this team together, they will have to pay him.

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The first series of Sunday morning’s Patriots-Jaguars game was a reminder of what we’ve missed in New England this season. Rookie Drake Maye rolled the Pats to a 7-0 lead with a pass-first offense that featured only one designed running call out of 11 plays on the drive.

Unfortunately, the rest of the game reminded us how bad this team is. Sloppy, undisciplined and lacking energy is a bad look for any team. It’s an especially bad look for a first-year head coach. Jerod Mayo’s team returned from London with a six-game losing streak. Will they win another game this season?

When Mayo became the coach, it seemed the players had a much friendlier figure in charge after the Bill Belichick reign. On Sunday he called his team soft after the loss. It will be interesting to see if the coach’s approach is tougher when work resumes this week.

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Red Sox center fielder Ceddanne Rafaela makes a diving catch against the Royals on Aug. 7. Rafaela played two demanding positions (shortstop and center field) and played them well, but is not a finalist for a Gold Glove. Reed Hoffman/Associated Press

Center fielder Jarren Duran and right fielder Wilyer Abreu were nominated for Gold Gloves this week, but somehow Ceddanne Rafaela was omitted as a utility player. Rafaela was exceptional at the two toughest defensive positions in the game, splitting his time between shortstop and center field. Apparently he paid the price for not playing more positions while not playing one position long enough to be nominated.

That should change next year. It’s hard to imagine Rafaela not being the everyday center fielder for the Sox. And his elite play at the position should have him in the hunt for Gold Gloves for years to come.

Tom Caron is a studio host for the Red Sox broadcast on NESN.