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NBA Celtics vs. Mavericks 2024 NBA Finals: Game 1 spread, total and moneyline prediction
NBA Celtics vs. Mavericks 2024 NBA Finals: Game 1 spread, total and moneyline prediction
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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.
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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.”