2024 NBA Finals: The Big Batch of Celtics vs. Mavericks Questions
It's time to crown a champion
Before we start: I have three free one-month trial subscriptions to Tom Ziller’s excellent Good Morning It's Basketball newsletter to hand out. I can’t imagine that anyone who subscribes to LNIB doesn’t already subscribe to GMIB, but the first three subscribers to respond as such will get a crack at them nonetheless.
There’s no need for a big preamble here. The Finals begin tomorrow tonight. Here’s what I’ll be watching out for.
How does Boston match up with Luka and Kyrie?
Does Luka have all the answers?
In the two regular-season games between Boston and Dallas, it was Jaylen Brown who drew the primary assignment on Luka Doncic, for the most part. Jrue Holiday spent a fair amount of time on him as well, but spent most of the games on Kyrie Irving.
It seems like a fair expectation that Boston will at least start the series that way, but one of the main reasons the Celtics are so good defensively is that they can come into a matchup like this with as many as three credible defenders for Doncic (Brown, Holiday, Jayson Tatum) and four for Irving (those three, plus Derrick White). You’d have to imagine that — unless the initial plan works so spectacularly that there’s no reason to change it — we will see each and every one of those matchups for at least a stretch of possessions during this series.
Of course, it’s unlikely that the first thing Boston tries will work out so well that nothing needs to change. Luka can and has and will beat every single kind of defense you throw at him, whether individually or with his ability to map the entire floor in an instant and fire the exact right pass to the exact right target at the exact right time. He will use the Celtics’ coverages against them and make them pay for whatever they try. The bigger question is whether he can break them to the point that they have to abandon their overall philosophy.
Boston sent extra defenders at opposing actions less often than almost any team in the NBA this season. The Celtics had the league’s ninth-least aggressive defense, according to the Aggression+ metric Krishna Narsu and I created; and they also had the fifth-least variable defense (Variance+), indicating that they did vary their level of aggressiveness from game to game all that often.
One of Boston’s most aggressive defensive games of the season, though, came against Dallas in the one game these two teams played after the trade deadline. Specifically, it was the Celtics’ second-most aggressive game of pick and roll defense all year, behind only an early-season game against the Timberwolves. Boston won that game going away, 138-110. The Mavs had a 112.6 offensive rating, the equivalent of a bottom-seven offense in the league. Luka pretty much tore them up with 37 points on 14 of 25 shooting and 11 assists, but the rest of the team couldn't hit shots: They went 6 of 25 combined from deep, with Irving and P.J. Washington shooting just 4 of 16.
Of course, a lot of things were different about the Mavs in that game. Daniel Gafford and Derrick Jones Jr. were coming off the bench and Tim Hardaway Jr. got more minutes than the two of them combined. Josh Green started. Dante Exum and Maxi Kleber got a total of 35 minutes and Jaden Hardy got 3. How well this strategy would work in Dallas' new alignment is up for debate; but we know the Celtics are at least open to venturing outside their comfort zone to deal with all the problems Luka poses.
And of course, that’s just pick and roll defense. How to deal with Doncic when he draws White, Kristaps Porzingis, or Al Horford on a switch and into isolation is a whole different challenge. (With White, it’s because of the sheer physicality. With Porzingis and Horford, it’s the ability to hang with Doncic in space. We saw what he did to poor Rudy Gobert, and what he does to everyone else.) Send a second defender at him there, and it is a near-guarantee that he will make you pay for it. Don’t send a second defender, and the same result is likely. There are no good options. There aren’t even necessarily less bad ones. It’s just a matter of finding something that works for a few possessions at a time until he cracks the code, then cycling to something else and hoping it lasts long enough before you have to change things up again.
And even that is just Doncic. But we’ll get to Irving more later on,
Can Derrick Jones (or P.J. Washington) handle Jayson Tatum?
Can the Celtics access the rim?
I’ve seen a bunch of people assuming that Washington will guard Tatum. That’s what happened the last time these two teams played, which was their only matchup after the trade deadline. But in that game, Jones came off the bench and played just 7 minutes. Three games later, he re-entered the starting lineup, and he has consistently been defending the opposing team’s best perimeter player since then. It would be pretty surprising, at least to me, if he didn’t get the first crack at guarding Tatum.
Jones has been tasked with guarding Paul George, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, and Anthony Edwards so far in these playoffs, and he has not only lived to tell about it, but done quite well in those matchups. SGA got the better of him, but George shot 41% from the field for the series against Dallas and was limited to only 19.5 points per game, while Edwards shot 43% and was held to 24.6 per game after averaging 31 and 28 per contest in his previous two series.
We've seen Tatum struggle with his shot for a lot of these playoffs. He's down at 44% from the field and just 29% from deep. That’s not gonna cut it in this series. Jones has held his matchups to an expected effective field goal percentage of just 46.5% in the playoffs, according to Second Spectrum. That's the sixth-lowest mark among 49 players who have defended at least 500 half-court possessions. He has the length and agility to stick with and bother Tatum, at least in theory.
But Tatum should have a strength and physicality advantage over him, and that’s where the second part of this question comes in. Tatum is at his best when fearlessly attacking the rim. Tatum's drives during the playoffs have been incredibly fruitful: They've generated 1.218 points per possession on plays where either Tatum or a teammate one pass away either shoots, draws a foul, or turns it over. That's third-best among 29 players with 75 or more drives during the postseason. He has the ability to do this pretty much whenever he wants, but too often settles for stepbacks and turnarounds and fadeaways. Again, that cannot happen here. He has to press the issue, get into Jones’ chest, and go through him and into the lane.
Getting to the rim is also a bellwether for Boston’s offense in general. The Celtics took only 21.2% of their shots within three feet of the basket during the regular season, the league's fifth-lowest share. They converted those shots at an absurdly high clip (74.5%, fourth-best), which is partially a result of the low volume but also just frustrating because those are the easiest shots on the floor and the Celtics don’t pursue them often enough.
Dallas during the playoffs has consistently closed off the rim for its opponents. Only 22.9% of the shots against Dallas have originated within three feet, and Maverick opponents have made only 64% of those shots. When either Daniel Gafford (45.2%) or Dereck Lively (49.3%) has been within five feet of both the shooter and the basket, according to NBA Advanced Stats, those conversion rates have been even lower.
Boston needs to find a way to either draw those guys away from the rim — a responsibility likely to fall to one of Kristaps Porzingis (more on him on a minute), Jrue Holiday, or Al Horford, for most of the series — or else attack them without fear of failure, and try to get one or both of them into foul trouble and force the Mavs to try to protect the basket with somebody else.
Which Kyrie are we getting?
How healthy is Kristaps Porzingis?
Let’s see if you can spot the difference between Kyrie’s stat lines in the three Western Conference playoff series:
I’ll make it easy for you: He was far less aggressive offensively in the series against Oklahoma City than he was against either the Clippers or Minnesota. I don’t think it’s a coincidence. Against OKC, he was tasked largely with guarding Jalen Williams. Physically, that’s a really significant challenge for him. Much more so than guarding either James Harden or Mike Conley were in the other two rounds.
How the Mavs choose to deploy Kyrie defensively could have a significant impact on what he’s able to bring on the other end of the floor. And that affects the matchups pretty much everywhere else. Want to use Gafford or Lively on Porzingis? That means P.J. Washington is probably on Jaylen Brown, and Irving has to spend a ton of time chasing Derrick White all over the place. Want to stash the center on Jrue Holiday? Well, now P.J. is probably on Porzingis and Kyrie has to deal with Jaylen’s physicality. Can you put Kyrie on Holiday? Sure, but then who is Luka guarding?
There are tradeoffs no matter which way the Mavs choose to align. How physically taxed Irving gets by his matchup, and the knock-on effect of that taxing, is not something I have seen many people mention, but seems highly important here.
Then there’s the big health question.
Porzingis … did not seem to be all that confident in his status when talking to reporters on Tuesday. He was saying things like “we’ll see,” hesitating a lot before declaring that he could run without pain, etc. Maybe that’s gamesmanship, but maybe it’s not. And if it’s not, that seems like a pretty big problem.
KP is Boston’s big mismatch problem against good teams — especially ones that want to shut off the paint like Dallas. His ability to hit from deep, and to get his shot off quickly (especially in comparison to Horford, whose shot takes forever to load), is how the Celtics punish those defenses better than almost any other team can. And when teams switch and try to guard Porzingis with a wing, that doesn’t work anymore. It did when he was in Dallas; but these days, he is one of the most effective post- and isolation-mismatch scorers in the league, and he’s become a much better passer when facing double teams in those situations as well. Oh, and he’s an elite rim protector to boot. So, yeah, his health is a major factor.
Will the supporting Mavs continue their hot shooting?
Who’s getting hunted? And is there a place to hide?
Washington, Jones, Green, Kleber, and Hardy have combined to shoot 38.3% from beyond the arc this postseason. During the regular season, that group shot 35.0%. That might not seem like a massive difference, but two or three makes per game that turn into misses can mean everything in a playoff series.
Washington has knocked down multiple three in all but four playoff games after doing so just 33 times in 71 regular-season contests. (And 14 in 29 games with Dallas.) He made five or more six times in the regular season and three times in the playoffs. Jones made three or more threes nine times all year, and has done so three times in the playoffs. Green had a pair of games with three treys and Kleber had a game with five.
Obviously, these guys are all capable of making shots like this. They’ve done it in the games I mentioned. But the rate at which they’re hitting and the frequency with which they’re having better-than-expected single-game performances is out of line with career norms. That doesn’t mean it can’t continue. Anything can happen in a small sample. It already has to this point. Now the Mavs just need one or more of those guys to keep it going, both for the series at large and possibly within each individual game.
Finally, quite often when games and series get close, they turn into a game of mismatch-hunting. Both teams have players who are eminently qualified to do said hunting, though Dallas’ two (Doncic and Irving, duh) are better suited for that specific task than are Boston’s (Tatum, Brown, kind of Porzingis).
The guys to hunt on the Celtics mostly either come off the bench (Horford, Hauser, maybe Payton Pritchard). The Mavericks’ guys are less obvious targets (like Hardy) than they are players who they probably want to avoid getting caught in a specific situation (Gafford on any of the guards, Washington as the lone back-line help, Doncic one on one in space or guarding a screener, etc).
The latter type of mismatch is arguably tougher to exploit, and Boston’s individual players are less-equipped to do so. That’s why the Celtics have to play their style of ball where things don’t bog down into isolation and mismatch-hunting. It’s not what they’re best at. The better they can do to avoid it, the better their chances in the series.