Celtics squash Mavs in Game 1; Porziņģis shines in return

BOSTON — For most of the NBA’s regular season, there was little doubt as to who was the best, deepest team. The same could be said for much of pro basketball’s first NBA Finals game in 2024.

Jaylen Brown led the Boston Celtics with 22 points, Kristaps Porziņģis made his triumphant return from a calf injury with 20 points, and the league’s No. 1 overall seed easily dispatched the Dallas Mavericks, 107-89, in Game 1 Thursday night.

Game 2 is at 8 p.m. Sunday at TD Garden. The Celtics, seeking a league-record 18th consecutive championship, have won 8 consecutive playoff games, dating to Game 3 of the second round against the Cavaliers.

Boston, which won 64 regular-season games, seven more than the next closest team and 14 better than the Mavericks, led Dallas by as many as 29 points in the first half and closed the third quarter on a 14-2 run to remove most doubt as to the outcome of this highly anticipated series.

“I liked the way we handled their run,” said Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla, whose timeout with 4:27 left in the third quarter helped stop the Mavs’ building momentum. “(Runs) are gonna happen, you’re not gonna stop that. You just have to have the poise and toughness to work through it.”

Luka Dončić, the league’s regular-season scoring champ, paced the Mavericks with 30 points and 10 rebounds but managed just one assist — indicative of a tough night for the Dallas offense in which the Mavs failed to move the ball and were forced into too many tough shots.

Kyrie Irving, the former Celtic who was booed lustily all night, was just 6-of-19 shooting for 12 points, missing all five 3-point tries, with two assists. The Mavs managed just 9 assists for the game and registered only 5 assists through three quarters. P.J. Washington, added by the Mavs at the trade deadline, outscored Irving with 14 points.

“They mostly play one-on-one. They send a lot of help, so that’s why,” Dončić said, in explaining the Mavs’ iso-heavy offense.

“That’s just good individual defense,” Mazzulla added. “I thought our defensive mindset, our defensive execution, our defensive game plan, our positioning, we had the right intentions and I thought we played really physical, for the most part, defending without fouling.”

Porziņģis, the former Maverick whom Dallas traded at the deadline in 2022, was playing his first game since April 29 because of a calf strain suffered in Game 4 of the first round. He’d missed 10 games and 38 days, and seemed to restore the Celtics from the very good team they had been for much of the postseason — losing just twice but struggling at times against Miami, Cleveland and Indiana, all of them missing top players at key times in each series — to the prohibitive favorite.

For more on Game 1 of the NBA Finals, follow The Athletic’s live blog.

Thursday marked just the second game of Porziņģis’ career, and first since the 2016-17 season, in which he came off the bench.

“The adrenaline was pumping through my veins,” Porziņģis said. “I did everything I could to prepare for this moment.”

About coming off the bench, Porziņģis said he was “fine with it” and “this situation made sense.”

Entering the game with less than eight minutes left in the first quarter, donning a long compression sleeve on his right leg to protect the calf, Porziņģis registered eight points in his first five minutes. He turned away Josh Green’s dunk try at the rim — the first of his three impressive blocks, a sign of his improved health — and finished 8-of-13 shooting with two 3s.

“That’s the KP that helped us get to where we are today,” said Mazzulla said, who gave little indication he is about to move Porziņģis back into the starting lineup.

Al Horford, age 38, remained Boston’s starting center and contributed 10 points with seven boards.

Brown, the MVP of the Eastern Conference finals, dominated in all facets. He had three blocks of his own, including the turning away of a dunk try and also swatting Irving’s layup attempt in the third quarter, added three steals, and contributed six rebounds.

Jayson Tatum, a first-team All-NBA performer and the face of the Celtics, slightly ahead of Brown, contributed 16 points and 10 rebounds. Boston was in no need of any Tatum heroics, in large part due to the balance restored by Porziņģis’ return.

Derrick White added 15 points for the Celtics, who bombed away as a team with 16 3s on 41 tries — continuing another trend from the regular season in which Boston was the league’s top 3-point shooting team. The Mavericks were 7-of-27 from deep.

“We’ve got to take those 3s away — that’s what hurt us the most,” Dončić said. “I think they are the best 3-point shooting team in the NBA, so sometimes it’s really hard to take those away. Especially when they have five guys out and they can all shoot. Obviously, we’ve got to make more. We didn’t make enough shots today to beat them. But we’ve got to be better on both ends.”

Doris Burke, NBA analyst for ESPN, made American television history Thursday by becoming the first woman on the call for a men’s major sports championship game (Finals, World Series, Stanley Cup, Super Bowl, etc.).

This story will be updated.

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(Photo: Maddie Meyer / Getty Images)