Mavericks-Celtics is a great NBA Finals matchup, and not just because of Kyrie vs. Boston

The 2024 NBA Finals, and the chance for glory that comes with it, begins for the Boston Celtics and the Dallas Mavericks on Thursday.

To prepare, The Athletic’s Tim Cato talked with Jay King and Jared Weiss about what we can all expect to see in this series.

Tim Cato: What a finals matchup we have here.

These teams’ paths couldn’t have been more different. The Mavericks fought through three 50-win teams while dealing with injuries, while Boston rolled through depleted Eastern Conference foes. But that doesn’t matter; you play who you play. They’re here now, and so are we.

There is more familiarity on the rosters. Let’s start there. It seems like Dallas’ Kyrie Irving has nothing in common with the player who wore a Celtics uniform from 2017 to 2019. What do Celtics fans most hold against him?

Jay King: Though Irving left in the summer of 2019 after promising to stay the previous fall, the drama from his final season sticks with Boston fans more than the departure itself. The 2018-19 Celtics were messier than a teenage boy’s bedroom. They were dysfunctional from the start; then-coach Brad Stevens, who didn’t rip into his team much, let the players have it after that season’s third preseason game. Things never got better.

It wasn’t all Irving’s fault. The Celtics’ younger players, who had flourished in the previous playoffs while Irving and Gordon Hayward were injured, wanted more touches. Hayward, coming back from a season-ending leg injury, still had a long way to go physically, but the coaching staff kept playing him big minutes because they believed the team would need him at full capacity eventually. The roster, loaded with talent, never came close to meshing.

Irving could have guided that group through its problems, but instead divided it further. He complained about the younger players’ approach to the game. He went into a shell around the team, as Marcus Smart once put it. By the end of the season, which ended with a five-game second-round series loss to the Milwaukee Bucks, fans were fed up with Irving already. Those emotions had mellowed over the years since, but now that he’s on Boston’s finals opponent, I suspect all the fury will resurface.

Irving’s not the only key starter set to run into his former team in this series. How is Kristaps Porziņģis viewed these days in Dallas?

Cato: Mavericks fans hold none of that venom for Porziņģis. It was a partnership that didn’t work out, that’s all. While Porziņģis had some early personality clashes with Luka Dončić, those were much more about Porziņģis’ perception of himself as a leading man — which Dončić became before Porziņģis even made his Mavericks debut — than anything directly between them.

Jared, we had a conversation about this back in February, and you wrote, “It seems like the (trade to) Washington forced him to re-evaluate what he expects and what he wants.” It’s that simple: Porziņģis wasn’t a good fit in Dallas, and he wasn’t as good a player. It took him being traded to reconsider his career, improve and turn into someone who could reach the finals. The same can be said for Dallas prioritizing another type of big man to put next to Dončić. There should be no hard feelings, and to my understanding, there aren’t.

Jared Weiss: The Celtics’ center told The Athletic that if he were the player he was today when he arrived in Dallas, he believed the Mavs would have used him differently.

“I take responsibility for that and Luka was playing out of his mind,” he said. “So, of course, we wanted to play through Luka and I was just there to support him.”

He said he is at peace with how things went in Dallas, so this series will offer closure on that period of his career rather than trigger some sort of vengeance.

Porziņģis’ focus is to stay healthy, which was what most hampered his career until last season. This was supposed to be his first real postseason run, but he strained his calf in Game 4 against Miami, before he could even see beyond the first round. He has been ramping up his activity at the Celtics facility this past week, and there is significant optimism he’ll be ready for Game 1.

Porziņģis’ return must happen for Boston to retain the upper hand in this series because of how much Dallas uses the air above the rim. Even Minnesota, a big team up front, struggled to contend with the lob threat from Dallas centers Dereck Lively II and Daniel Gafford. Porziņģis’ biggest task, if healthy, is to disrupt that connection and force Dallas to move the ball away from the paint. If he can make enough of a defensive impact that Boston doesn’t have to use two bigs at the same time, the Celtics can stick with their league-best offense that has carried them all year.

Cato: Health-wise, Dallas is finally whole. Maxi Kleber, a crucial backup big man, returned in Game 4 last round after missing nine playoff games with a shoulder injury. Lively, the team’s phenomenal rookie center, is fine after a scary-looking neck sprain last series.

Most importantly, Dončić finally looks like himself. He’s back to being an on-court force having dominated the last round against Minnesota after laboring against the Clippers and Oklahoma City while playing through a sprained right knee. He’s not 100 percent, but he’s close enough. And that close enough version is enough to terrify any opponent.

Let’s start there: There’s no stopping him, but how does Boston try bothering Dončić? How will the Celtics set up defensively against a Mavericks offense led by what some say might be the most talented scoring backcourt in NBA history?

King: It’s like the world forgets Irving played with LeBron James. If Dončić is a guard, so was James. But I digress.

Jaylen Brown often drew the Dončić assignment during the regular season. Though the Celtics will have other options to throw at Dončić, Brown’s combination of size and athleticism gives him as good a chance as anyone to at least make Dončić feel him. Dončić can’t be stopped, but the Celtics will try to make him work for everything. I’d guess they will regularly pick him up full-court. They will try to make every catch difficult for him. Throughout what could be a long series, they should try everything to fatigue him.

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The chess match will also involve other pieces. The Celtics often match Porziņģis up on the opponent’s worst perimeter shooter so he can sag off them to protect the rim. Can Derrick Jones Jr. or P.J. Washington punish that strategy by making enough outside shots? Can the Mavericks find other solutions to take advantage of that tactic? How much will Dončić and Kyrie Irving be able to attack Porziņģis, who could be limited physically after missing most of the playoffs? If the Celtics can keep Porziņģis near the rim, where he is most effective as a defender, he will help deter Dončić, Irving and Dallas’ lob game.

Weiss: In the March matchup between these teams, Dallas creatively found ways to get Porziņģis out of position. Boston often put Porziņģis on Washington and had Jayson Tatum or Brown on Lively so Tatum could be up on ball screens and Porziņģis could rove the baseline.

In response, Dallas used Washington as the pick-and-roll screener and even sometimes put the ball in Washington’s hands to execute handoff actions with Dončić. Porziņģis got caught being too aggressive on the ball and Dallas’ bigs were able to get clean rolls into the paint off those actions. Porziņģis was also off-balanced at times, enabling Dallas to flip its screens to get him behind the play. But the Celtics got a better feel for how to help off the corner shooters as the game went along and eventually found their rhythm covering Dončić’s pick-and-roll.

This series will often require Porziņģis to defend up to the level of the screen, which could be a challenge. He often drops further back in part to conserve his energy. When Dallas has players cut up from the baseline toward the perimeter, Boston will often use a sort of zone-like strategy that ends with them switching everything to keep Porziņģis down low. If Porziņģis gets stuck guarding Dončić on an isolation, the Celtics will shade the nearest help defender over to prevent Dončić from dribbling past his former teammate. They have ways to protect their bigs from getting run around in circles, but the Mavs have ways to move the ball around or through those coverages.

Cato: Dallas could challenge Boston’s defensive identity. The Celtics do not like to blitz, or double, opposing pick-and-rolls. (Only one team blitzed less often than Boston in the regular season, according to Second Spectrum.) The Celtics make opponents beat their superb wing defenders in one-on-one situations and help only when necessary. Dončić will score on them, but it’s taxing to do that for an entire series, so letting him do that could be the right strategy even if he has gaudy point totals.

But does Boston have the resolve to stick to their principles for entire games, even if Dončić’s torching them? When he morphs into the unguardable version of himself, as he did closing out the Timberwolves in the last round? Because traditional pick-and-roll coverages — drop, show-and-recovery, etc. — don’t work against that version of Dončić.

We’ll see every variation of coverage and defender thrown at Dončić throughout this series. But if Boston feels forced into doubling him, that will play into Dončić’s hands.

King: The Mavericks prioritized defense and athleticism with their supporting cast. That was the right move; they have been a dominant defensive team since the February trade deadline. But they don’t have a lineup of knockdown shooters around Dončić and Irving. Can the Celtics turn that into a vulnerability? Or will the Mavericks hurt them for trying?

On the other end of the court, Dallas has allowed just 45.6 points in the paint per 100 possessions in the playoffs, which would have led the league during the regular season. How will the Mavericks approach defending the Celtics, who will deploy five outside threats as long as Porziņģis is available?

Cato: There’s another question of identity posed on this end, too. Dallas has transformed its defense by packing the paint. It happily concedes switches with Dončić and Irving because the team trusts what’s behind them. (It helps that both stars have played above-average defense these playoffs.) To do that, Dallas finds weak-shooting focal points to help off. Even the Oklahoma City Thunder, who nominally play with five-out spacing, were susceptible to that strategy.

But what does Dallas do against an opponent whose entire playing rotation will happily take double-digit 3s if left open?

Dallas will probably dare Tatum and Brown to make the same pick-and-roll reads — skip passes to the opposite corner — that Anthony Edwards couldn’t consistently make against them last round. The team might double or trap them liberally, but both stars, Tatum in particular, are advanced enough playmakers to punish that.

If that doesn’t work, Dallas might have no choice but to switch everything, which might make Gafford’s starting spot ceremonial or even non-existent. He’s not as effective covering space on the perimeter as Lively; the rookie phenom has had excellent one-on-one possessions against virtually every star Dallas has faced this postseason. Kleber is important, too, since his best defensive attribute is his lateral movement on switches or helping from the opposite side. If Dallas commits to a switch-everything scheme, the Mavericks might want him playing next to Lively as much as possible. A pick-and-roll can pull one shot blocker away from the rim, but not two.

Weiss: It was apparent the Celtics wanted to run early in the team’s last regular-season game to get Irving stuck in a transition crossmatch and run the play through that matchup. Boston’s bigs tried to bury him in the post, or they would try to find Tatum so he could attack Dallas’ centers off the catch.

So much of Boston’s offense against Dallas has been pursuing post-ups for Tatum and Brown on Dallas’ guards, especially to lure a double team to find Porziņģis open for 3. If Dallas maintained its usual matchups, Boston often ran pick-and-pops for Porziņģis or Al Horford to get them open 3s. If Boston uses double-big lineups, Horford will screen for Porziņģis off the ball so that Porziņģis can get to the post on Dončić. The Celtics’ game plan is based on manipulating the position of Dallas’ center and living with the Mavs having another big out there. Boston won that March matchup on the strength of second-half stretches where Dallas went to a second unit with Kleber at the five, so one of Gafford and Lively should be on the court as much as possible.

King: I can’t wait for this series. It has everything. Tense history. Great matchups. Stylistic clashes. Whether it’s Dončić or Tatum and Brown, someone from the next generation of stars is set to earn his first championship. As great as the playoffs were when LeBron James and Stephen Curry almost always seemed to reach the finals, it’s time for a new era.

Required Reading:

(Top photo: David Butler II / USA Today)