After almost a week without games, the 2024 NBA Finals between the Boston Celtics and Dallas Mavericks will tip off on Thursday night. We paneled three writers on the biggest story lines coming out of media day and heading into Game 1.
How much will Kristaps Porzingis sway the series?
Michael Pina: There’s no more important question heading into the 2023-24 NBA Finals than “Is Kristaps Porzingis OK?” The Boston Celtics can still win even if he’s not operating at full health, but that likelihood increases dramatically when he is, especially in this particular matchup against the large, physical, explosive Dallas Mavericks.
When asked at Finals media day whether he feels like himself, Porzingis was honest about his condition. “It’s tough to say. I haven’t played for a while. Tomorrow will be my first real minutes in a while. I did as much as I could to prepare for this moment,” he said. “But there’s nothing like game minutes and game experience that I’m going to get tomorrow.”
Porzingis has not played a meaningful minute since straining his calf in Game 4 of Boston’s first-round series against the Heat. As he navigates the floor in a willowy, towering frame that’s spent the past 38 days rehabbing, resting, and recovering, his adjustment period will be short. Will the shot-swatting, 3-point-drilling, unanswerable conundrum who helped make Boston a runaway favorite in the Eastern Conference turn into someone who more closely resembles a liability?
If from the opening tip Porzingis moves like he did between October and April, the Celtics will infuse their rotation with a key complementary cog at the perfect time. His offensive effect is more or less straightforward. He drags opposing big men—in this case Daniel Gafford and Dereck Lively II—out of the paint and then punishes opposing wings in the mid-post.
Where his presence really matters, though, is on defense. The trickle-down effect alone is significant. With Porzingis in the lineup, Al Horford won’t be overextended on that end, and Joe Mazzulla won’t have to decide between thrusting Luke Kornet (who is fine but not able to space the floor) into a sizable role or going small and getting exposed on the glass.
It’ll be interesting to see what lineups Porzingis plays in, too. If there’s concern with physically overburdening him—as he jostles for rebounds, covers lots of ground, contests outside shots, endures general exhaustion as a back-line anchor—will Mazzulla attach him to Horford more than we saw in the regular season? Lineups that featured those two were excellent on both sides of the ball this year. They started 14 games together and appeared in Boston’s third-most common five-man unit (alongside Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown, and Derrick White), which outscored opponents by 19.6 points per 100 possessions in non-garbage-time minutes while absolutely dominating the boards.
But playing more size may reduce Boston’s speed and flexibility against Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving, dueling pick-and-roll maestros who would then have two less mobile options to attack off a high ball screen.
When he’s the only big on the floor and is brought up to guard a ball screen, can Porzingis help limit pull-up 3s from Doncic and Irving and catch-and-shoot chances from the corners? In other words, can he move his feet well enough in space to be high on the floor and not give up a blowby that then forces Boston’s defense to over-help or collapse? And when he’s planted around the paint while his man stands behind the 3-point line, can KP close out quickly enough to prevent wide-open shots and straight-line drives to the rim?
In a nutshell, can he do stuff like this, without fouling, over and over and over again?
The Mavericks will go at Porzingis early and often. Throughout the series, they’ll have his man set screens around mid-court to give Irving and Doncic a long runway. They’ll hit him with back screens in stack pick-and-rolls. They’ll deploy stagger screens that force Boston to switch and make KP hold his own one-on-one.
If taking the ball out of Irving’s or Doncic’s hands is the strategy Mazzulla wants to use, can Porzingis blitz and recover when called on to do so, scrambling up and back, accelerating and decelerating in a confined space?
Dallas will also try other stuff that doesn’t directly involve Porzingis. And when it does, Boston will need him to be what he was during the regular season: one of the best rim protectors in the world. There were 113 players who defended at least 200 shots around the basket this season; only five held opponents to a lower percentage than Porzingis’s 52.1 percent.
On shots taken within 6 feet of the basket against Porzingis, the opposing field goal percentage was 13.7 percentage points lower than their regular average. To put that number in perspective, Rudy Gobert was at 13.4 percentage points, Victor Wembanyama was at 10.8, and Chet Holmgren was at 11.4. Among all players who contested at least 150 shots within 6 feet, only Jonathan Isaac’s impact was more detrimental to shooters than KP’s.
What’s particularly relevant to the Finals is how the Celtics have protected the rim during their dominant playoff run. Boston did a terrific job limiting shots around the basket, but the Heat, Cavaliers, and Pacers still shot 70.5 percent in the restricted area, a rim protection number that would have been the worst in the NBA during the season. It’s here where the Celtics really missed their 7-foot-2 intimidator. Can he be this explosive against Dallas’s ball handlers when they fly off a ball screen?
Boston’s opposing at-rim field goal percentage was 6.1 percent lower with Porzingis on the court this year. Only a few centers had a larger impact. (According to BBall Index, he also saved 2.65 points at the hoop per 75 possessions, which was first in the league, just ahead of Walker Kessler, Gobert, and Holmgren.)
The Mavs don’t attack the rim at a high rate (they’ve typically finished in the bottom three since Doncic was drafted), but whether it’s a lob, layup, or putback chance, they’re incredibly accurate. Porzingis’s ability to disrupt the chances that they do get will matter. If he’s spry, physical, and disciplined enough to hold up on the perimeter and maintain the defensive identity he had all year, Boston’s ceiling will be a cobweb.
“It’ll be tough to jump into the Finals like this, but I did everything I could to prepare for it, and we’ll see tomorrow night,” he said. “It’s going to be goose bumps, for sure, especially not playing for a while, then coming back in this kind of environment. It’s going to be special. I’m really, really, really looking forward to it.”
Is Kyrie Irving ready for his return to Boston?
Howard Beck: For three straight Junes, from 2015 through 2017, Kyrie Irving was an NBA Finals fixture—as entrenched on the grand stage as Stephen Curry, LeBron James, and Larry O’Brien. Then came a trade request, followed by an actual trade, a rocky tenure in Boston, an even rockier tenure in Brooklyn, another trade request, and another trade.
Seven years passed, and here was Irving, back at last on the Finals stage Wednesday afternoon—in Boston of all places—and with the ghost of LeBron virtually welcoming him back. “I’m so fucking happy and so proud to watch him continue his growth,” James had said of Irving a day earlier, on an episode of the Mind the Game podcast. “I’m so fucking mad at the same time that I’m not his running mate anymore.”
That burst of profane praise reached Irving long before he settled in for his turn at the Finals podium on Wednesday. But still, he could only smile and rub his face when asked about it. “Is that the first question? Oh God, I love it. Got to love this, man.”
Irving knew it was coming, just as he knew he’d be asked about hostile fans, his old Celtics teammates, and, of course, the seven-year detour he took to get back to the Finals—this time without James. Their partnership was always complicated, wildly successful but fraught, bogged down by insecurities and immaturity. Both men clearly look back more fondly on it now.
“There’s a lot of gratitude there,” Irving said. “Obviously, I’m at a different age, a different place in my life. So is he. I think we both have been able to mature and really appreciate what we got a chance to accomplish. I think there were some things that got in the way of our relationship when I was a little bit younger. Now that I’m able to vocalize how I feel as a man and be comfortable in it and stand on my square and my beliefs and where I’m coming from, I feel like our relationship’s different because of that now.”
They accomplished plenty, including, of course, a championship in 2016—punctuated by James’s chase-down block and Irving’s clinching 3-pointer in the final minutes of Game 7. But it was not enough for Irving, who wanted a chance to grow and test his leadership outside James’s massive shadow. So he issued the trade demand that set him on this circuitous path—to Boston, Brooklyn, and finally Dallas, where he’s now enjoying a fruitful partnership with another generational talent, Doncic.
The roles are reversed now, with the 32-year-old Irving serving as the elder statesman and the 25-year-old Doncic eagerly soaking up his wisdom along the way. It’s essentially what Irving set out to find all those years ago, when he made the unusual choice to leave the best player in the NBA. He expresses no regrets now, but he does allow a little sentimentality.
“Definitely miss him,” Irving said of James. “I definitely think about those times. Now we’re here in the present, where we’re able to reflect. But also now I’m at this stage, able to use some of the formulas that I was taught from him. I feel like I’ve been built for this moment because I’ve gone through some of the things I’ve gone through in my past with some of the guys that have transcended the game.”
That’s the thing about LeBron James: You can leave his team, but you never escape his orbit.
“Shout-out to LeBron for that,” Irving said. “Knows how to stir up a media storm, get everybody in here talking about us.”
Which role players could end up becoming Finals heroes?
Rob Mahoney: P.J. Washington is already a playoff standout and a borderline folk hero in Dallas. But why stop there? This matchup is tailor-made for his skill set, at least in the sense that if the Mavericks win, Washington will have to be a significant reason. Defending against a team as versatile and fluid as the Celtics is a full-squad endeavor, but it has to start somewhere—and most often that’s wherever Tatum or Brown might be on the floor. Both of those assignments will fall to Washington at times and will test the full range of his defensive talents.
“They pretty much have a bunch of different weapons,” Washington said Wednesday. “I feel like we’ve been preparing for it throughout the whole playoffs.”
The playoff gauntlet has already pitted Washington against the likes of Kawhi Leonard, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, James Harden, Jalen Williams, and Paul George. Yet the Dallas forward is as vital for the work he’ll do switching away from the Celtics stars in these Finals as he is in slowing them directly. Washington will muck up the action. He’ll get in the face of any Celtic looking to make a statement. If the ball swings his way, he’ll step up to take some of the biggest shots of the series, and if this playoff run is any indication, he might well swing the Finals. Washington has the complete profile for a Robert Horry moment—he just needs that moment to find him.
That in and of itself is a good reminder: While some of the role players that find Finals immortality are sturdy, every-night contributors, all it really takes is one great game, a transcendent quarter, or just a single, perfect shot. Boston’s top six will account for most of those standout contributions, but if anyone outside that group is poised to make a memorable impact in this series, it’s likely Sam Hauser. This series doesn’t feel especially friendly to Payton Pritchard or any of Boston’s bigs. Yet Hauser will see time as a weakside punisher, as a designated shooter in certain crunch-time situations, and perhaps even as a zone buster if Dallas tries to junk up its coverages. Hauser hasn’t been hitting shots to his usual standard in these playoffs, but if anything, that makes him feel only more poised for an inevitable breakout.
“It happens to everybody in this game,” Hauser said. “That’s why you play the game of basketball. That’s why it’s a team sport, not just an individual sport. I try to impact the game other ways. Obviously, shooting is the loud impact that I make. But I always know that water finds its level. It usually regresses to the mean. Shots are bound to start falling.”
If those shots fall at a reasonable clip, Hauser could wind up a champion in the background of every commemorative photo and retrospective. If he has one of those games, he might never buy a drink in Boston for the rest of his life.
What is one thing you’re watching for in Game 1?
Pina: Aside from Porzingis’s physical stamina and mobility, I’m most looking forward to seeing how Dallas deals with the best offense in basketball. The Mavs benefited from a bit of 3-point luck (on both sides) in a tight second-round series against the Oklahoma City Thunder and watched one of the most accurate shooting bigs in history go 8-for-33 behind the arc in the conference finals. Another cold spell could occur in the Finals. But Dallas’s greatest defensive strength (rim protection) is less relevant against the Celtics roster, which takes and makes the most outside shots. Boston knows how to create a ton of good looks and has enough talent to punish defenses that go out of their way to curb them.
Beck: I’m very curious to see just how aggressive Celtics fans will be toward Irving—and whether he can follow his own advice and tune out the worst of it. He let the taunts get to him in the 2022 playoffs (while playing for the Brooklyn Nets), flipping off fans who had been directing obscenities at him. On Wednesday, Irving said he would counsel his younger teammates to “breathe through” the hostility. “Realize that it is not as hostile as you think it is. Don’t overthink it,” he said. “The fans are going to say what they’re going to say. I appreciate them and their relationship they have to the game. But it’s about the players at the end of the day.” The Celtics have the overall talent advantage in the series, which means that Dallas needs Irving to be at his absolute steadiest. For the Mavericks to have any chance of stealing a game in Boston, Irving will first have to heed his own advice.
Mahoney: You know that Luka is the real deal because any conversation about how to even attempt to guard him quickly veers into the philosophical. Is there an intangible, even psychological benefit to switching every ball screen that Luka dials up, forcing him to win the game one-on-one? Or is the wiser move always to force the ball out of the hands of the best player, even if that player happens to throw passes to the weakside corner with pinpoint accuracy? Or is the most prudent path to fall somewhere in between, in gradations of help without an all-out commitment to the trap? We’ll see where Mazzulla and the Celtics fall in that debate soon enough—at least in terms of their opening coverage. The hardest part of playing against Doncic and the Mavericks, in many ways, is committing to any one strategy. Eventually, he’ll smoke whatever coverage you put in front of him. And it’s only then that we’ll see which wins out: the theory or the panic.