The performances of superstars Luka Doncic and Jayson Tatum will go a long way in deciding the 2024 NBA Finals.
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BOSTON – Questions about the 2024 NBA Finals have been growing since this game between Boston and Dallas ended last week. The answers, the real answers, will only reveal themselves on the ground in the weeks to come.
Here are 10, though, to serve as a placeholder for what we’ll learn about the Celtics, Mavericks and their dueling quest for legacy and hardware, which begins Thursday with Game 1 (8:30 a.m. ET, ABC).
1. Do playground-style leaderboards mean anything?
For some reason, this is an increasingly popular exercise for studio shows and media outlets looking to kill time while everyone waits for the league championship series to begin. It’s like the briefly used All-Star draft, that mechanism that traumatized so many kids who were picked last — and might have ticked off Denver’s three-time Kia NBA MVP Nikola Jokic if it happened to him .
This is perhaps a clumsy and completely unscientific way of assessing the relative strengths of teams, based on how many of their players are selected in the first X number of picks. An analysis of the Celtics and Mavericks rosters this year might look like this:
- Luka Doncic
- Jayson Tatum
- Jaylen Brown
- Kyrie Irving
- Jrue Vacations
- Derrick White
- Derek Lively II
And so on. Which doesn’t tell us much about how they will compete, share responsibilities, fight in cold times, etc. It certainly didn’t help the last time Dallas got to this round, when the 2011 Miami Heat had three of their games. the four best talents in the finals, including the first LeBron James, and still lost. So the answer is no.
2. Do Tatum and Brown get along well, and if not, will this derail Boston?
It’s a chatty question straight out of a high school cafeteria, sillier than the much meatier “Does Kyrie Irving regret stomping on the Boston logo with mascot Lucky at TD Garden court ago three years ?
The Celtics wings accomplished so much together, combining for five conference finals, two trips to the Finals and eight All-Star selections during their seven years as teammates. Brown became the highest-paid player in the NBA last summer and Tatum is poised to surpass him with his next contract. Together, they drain options and energy from opposing defenses, and they have led Boston to a 76-20 record since the season began in October.
It’s not ideal to answer a question with a question, but it’s effective: Are you best friends with everyone you work with? Is this stopping any of you from doing your best?
3. What does this series represent for coaches?
There’s a trivial aspect to Boston’s Joe Mazzulla and Dallas’ Jason Kidd working the sidelines in the first Finals to feature two black head coaches since 1975, when Golden State’s Al Attles faced Washington’s KC Jones .
It doesn’t mean as much as it does for one of them to get here, and for one of them to win here. Mazzulla had a rocky debut season when he was abruptly placed in Ime Udoka’s vacant role in 2022-23. Kidd is on his third team in eight seasons as head coach.
Both learned while remaining true to their beliefs and systems. Mazzulla’s use of a full roster and his connection with newcomer Holiday this season stood out. Kidd adjusted to midseason acquisitions, leaned on defense and managed the large egos of Doncic and Irving.
One of the coaches will win. Both have been validated.
4. Who guards Luka?
The TV graphics will line up five players per side, per position, and imply that this is how they will face every series. The real NBA competition is far from there, of course.
Holiday and White will be isolated on Doncic at times, with Holiday’s strength being better suited to the matchup. But pick-and-rolls and turnovers mean many Boston players will get their turn in the tank. The best-equipped guy at this point might be Brown, who seemed to roll up his sleeves for the challenge when the teams played on March 1 (Celtics’ 138-110 win).
The team’s defense also matters, which in this case means eliminating lobbed targets from Doncic, Lively and Daniel Gafford as much as possible. This does not mean that transforming the Slovenian multi-threat into a shooter/scorer is an objective.
5. What if Kyrie returned to Boston?
Irving’s two unsatisfactory seasons with the Celtics (2017-2019) will serve as a backdrop to this series, with Boston fans still grumpy about the point guard’s lack of commitment and leadership. He left for Brooklyn after committing to re-sign with the Celtics and has been taking his lumps at TD Garden ever since.
We’ll focus on the spectacle he puts on, but that won’t have much to do with the results. The fans won’t be poking any bears, not with Irving as the most experienced player in the finals of this series, and it’s likely he’ll already be at peak motivation and focus.
6. Will Kristaps Porzingis play for Boston?
A good answer is “yes,” and a better answer when it comes to the Celtics is “right away.” It was reported that the 7-foot center would open the series with everyone else in Game 1, which would be his first game since April 29.
It was the fourth game against Miami, in which Porzingis suffered a strained right calf. That suggests a lot of rust, but it also provided him with nearly seven weeks of rest and rehab from an injury that is scaring the NBA’s medical staff these days. It was, after all, the immediate precursor to Kevin Durant leading up to his torn Achilles tendon in the 2019 Finals.
It seems unlikely that Porzingis will play without a minutes restriction, and the Celtics’ 9-1 flow since the loss could be disrupted. But they welcome him back, especially his pick-and-pop spacing and defensive presence in the paint.
7. What are the X-factors for each team?
White for the Celtics, PJ Williams for the Mavericks. White can earn redemption for a disappointing experience in the 2022 Finals. That’s when he scored 21 points in the opening win, then managed just 38 points and one score less -87 in the last five games against Golden State. It was his first playoff series with Boston; now he’s established and often their most valuable player in the playoffs.
Washington will have to blink, as all 17 of its playoff appearances have come this spring. But he scored in double figures in 15 of them, with the size (6-foot-7, 230 pounds) to get physical with Boston’s wings.
8. How did Dallas achieve this Doncic-Irving duo?
For a sport played with only one ball, teaming up with two of the most dominant guards in the NBA seemed like pure madness to many. Irving showed up in February 2023, bringing with him his unreliable reputation and stubborn off-the-field history. This made the trade look like a big-name attempt to prove that the franchise wasn’t suspending Doncic on its own.
But Irving began to thrive away from Brooklyn and COVID-19. He seemed more willing to show his love for the game and, more importantly, he and Doncic talked, built mutual respect and made space for each other.
He now seems in better physical and emotional shape. He shows more energy defensively than in the past. And he and Doncic are the same handful of opponents that Irving and his former star teammates have been for their own organizations.
9. Would Boston’s “easy” road to a title taint it?
It’s true that each of the Celtics’ opponents in the previous three rounds of the East played without stars for all or part of the games. Miami was without Jimmy Buter, Cleveland lost Donovan Mitchell for the final two contests and Indiana’s Tyrese Haliburton missed two in the conference finals.
Big deal. If the Celtics clinch the Larry O’Brien Championship Trophy this year, time will erase all the asterisks. Do we really know by heart which NBA championships were won by deceased stars?
And if the Celtics don’t win, that result will largely ruin and define their season, but who or wasn’t there to face them in the playoffs won’t matter much. Which brings us to the next question:
10. Is it a championship or a failure for Boston?
In a word, yes. Six trips to the East final in eight years, with an appearance in the final in 2022 against Golden State to whet appetites, this one constitutes a serious door knock. Tatum (26) and Brown (27) are still young as the two pillars of this team, and there would be nothing tactically wrong with moving it back.
But the belief is perhaps not there, neither among the supporters, nor perhaps even among the players. Al Horford, 38, could be crushed, and losing to that instant contender in Dallas wouldn’t be as palatable as, say, losing to defending champion Denver might have been.
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Steve Aschburner has been writing about the NBA since 1980. You can email him here, find his archives here and follow him on.
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