NBA Finals 2024: Hot Takes and Top Storylines Mavericks vs. Celtics Game 1

The wait is finally over.

Game 1 of the 2024 NBA Finals arrives Thursday night, a full week since the last postseason tilt. Rest, in other words, will not be a problem for either the Boston Celtics, who are 10 days removed from their sweep of the Indiana Pacers, or the Dallas Mavericks, who needed just five games to dispatch the Minnesota Timberwolves.

Could rust be a worry? In theory, sure, but between the talent levels of these teams and the massive spectacle that is the championship stage, both should be fully prepared for what’s ahead.

So, what could decide what’s about to happen: both in this game and the series at large? To help dissect that question, we’ll spotlight two of the biggest storylines entering the contest before dropping a hot-take prediction for this series.

Some championship rounds lack engaging storylines entering the series. This is not one of them.

There is history on both sides of the matchup, even though it’s the first postseason meeting between the franchises.

Before Kyrie Irving was electrifying the Mavericks with his isolation wizardry and shot-making, he was: suiting up for the Celtics, pledging his allegiance to the franchise, walking back that commitment, signing elsewhere, stomping on their logo and giving their fans the one-finger salute.

“When we played in the playoffs and everyone saw me flip off the birds and kind of lose my s–t a little bit—that wasn’t a great reflection of who I am and how I like to compete on a high level,” Irving told reporters this week. “… I wasn’t my best self during that time. When I look back on it, I just see it as a time where I learned how to let go of things and learned how to talk through my emotions.”

Similarly, before Kristaps Porziņģis arrived as the potential missing piece in Boston, he once served as Dallas’ best hope for a Luka Dončić co-star. The Mavericks had huge hopes when they acquired Porziņģis in January 2019, but the partnership never clicked and Dallas wound up trading him away at the 2022 deadline.

Despite rumblings suggesting otherwise, Dončić contended he has a good relationship with Porziņģis, who claimed there is “no ill will” between him and the Mavericks.

Without fail, every championship-round tussle will spark debate between talking heads regarding which team is under the most pressure. While the answer pretty obviously seems to be the Celtics, who reached at least the conference finals in six of the last eight years but are still searching for their first title since 2008, this popular talking point has legs on both sides of the matchup.

Boston’s side of this conversation is simple. The Celtics have had multiple cracks at with this core and have yet to clear the proverbial hump. That’s why they’ve aggressively sought out potential finishing pieces, be that Derrick White at the 2022 trade deadline or Porziņģis and Jrue Holiday last offseason. That moves were made with the intention of delivering a title, and if it can’t happen in a year like this—when so many typical contenders were undone by injury—this front office could wind up with serious questions over whether the breakthrough is ever happening.

There might be slightly less urgency on Dallas’ side, though the word slightly is important. While possibilities for the future feel limitless with Dončić still (somehow) only 25 years old, the Mavericks have invested plenty for the chance to win right now. They don’t have their first-round pick this year, in 2027 (top-two protected) or in 2029, plus they’ve sacrificed swap rights in 2028 and 2030.

That’s a hefty price to pay to put this roster together. It’s worth it, obviously, if the Mavs can make good on their championship potential, but the pressure to capture at least one ring with this core will be ever present until the job is finished.

On paper, this series has all-time-classic potential.

The Celtics have a sizable talent gap, but the Mavericks have played some brilliant basketball since their deadline dealings tied things together like a Lebowskian rug. And given the tendency of Boston’s core to sometimes get clunky in the clutch—11th in clutch net rating last postseason, per NBA.com—the idea of some nail-biters against closers the caliber of Dončić and Irving is unnerving at best.

In practice, though, that talent gap could be all the difference the Celtics need to turn this into a quick series.

If you pooled these rosters together for a quick-pick fantasy draft, you could conceivably draft six Celtics—all five starters plus Al Horford—before selecting a Maverick not named Dončić or Irving. And with Tatum, Brown and White now able to lean on the likes of Porziņģis and Holiday, the offensive menu should be expansive enough to avoid the crunch-time blunders that previously plagued this bunch.

If the Celtics hold serve on their home floor in Games 1 and 2, something they notably failed to do in the first two rounds but did manage in the Eastern Conference finals, they have more than enough to swipe at least one game in Dallas and close out the championship in front of their home fans in Game 5—if not sooner.