NBA Finals Game 1 updates (2024)

BOSTON – For most of the NBA’s regular season, there was little doubt as to who was the best, deepest team. The same could be said for much of pro basketball’s first Finals game in 2024.

Jaylen Brown led the Boston Celtics with 22 points, Kristaps Porziņģis made his triumphant return from a calf injury with 20 points, and the league’s No. 1 overall seed easily dispatched the Dallas Mavericks, 107-89, in Game 1 Thursday night.

Game 2 is at 8 p.m. Sunday at TD Garden.

Read more here.

BOSTON — New Englanders booed Kyrie Irving on Thursday night. They jeered when he missed shots. They told him, in unison, he is a verb worse than “stinks.”

Irving’s reply, following his first NBA Finals game against his former team, at TD Garden, the building he called home for two injury-plagued, tumultuous seasons?

“I thought it was going to be a little louder in here.”

Safe bet Celtics fans meet Irving’s expectations in Game 2 on Sunday.

“We’ve got to take those 3s away — that’s what hurt us the most,” Luka Dončić said postgame. “I think they are the best 3-point shooting team in the NBA, so sometimes it’s really hard to take those away. Especially when they have five guys out and they can all shoot.

“Obviously, we’ve got to make more. We didn’t make enough shots today to beat them. But we’ve got to be better on both ends.”

“I liked the way we handled their run,” Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla said, whose timeout with 4:27 left in the third quarter helped stop the Mavs’ building momentum. “(Runs) are gonna happen, you’re not gonna stop that. You just have to have the poise and toughness to work through it.”

“That’s just good individual defense,” Mazzulla added. “I thought our defensive mindset, our defensive execution, our defensive game plan, our positioning, we had the right intentions and I thought we played really physical, for the most part, defending without fouling.”

I saw the Clippers dominate the Mavericks at home to begin the 2024 postseason in similar fashion to how the Celtics dominated the Mavericks at home to begin the 2024 NBA Finals.

The score of the Mavericks-Clippers Game 1 was 109-97. The score of Mavericks-Celtics Game 1 was 107-89. But it goes deeper than that:

• The leader in field goals made for the Clippers? Not Paul George or James Harden, but Ivica Zubac (10 of 17). The leader in field goals made for the Celtics?
• Not Jayson Tatum or Jaylen Brown, but Kristaps Porzingis (8 of13).
• The Clippers made 46 percent from the field, including 18 of 36 3s.
• The Celtics made 47.6 percent from the field, with slightly less efficiency from 3 on similar volume (16 of 42).
• The Clippers had exactly 10 offensive rebounds and a 21:14 assist-turnover ratio.
• The Celtics had exactly 10 offensive rebounds and a 23:14 assist-turnover ratio.
• The Clippers had 36 paint points (albeit on a porous 18 of 45 rate), while the Celtics had 38 paint points (19 of 29 attempts).
• Luka Dončić had 33 points on 26 attempts against the Clippers, making 4 of 12 3s and compiling 4 turnovers.
• Against the Celtics, Doncic had 30 points on 26 attempts, making 4 of 12 3s and compiling 4 turnovers.
• Against the Clippers, the Mavericks were outscored by eight points in Daniel Gafford's 14:03 and 19 points in Dereck Lively II's 19:08.
• Against the Celtics, the Mavericks were outscored by 10 points in Gafford's 14:19 and 15 points in Lively's 18:29, with Lively making one field goal in each of those games.
• The Clippers led by as many as 29 points in Game 1. That was the largest lead of the game in Game 1 for the Celtics as well.
• Dallas wound up outscoring the Clippers and Celtics in each of the third and fourth quarters of the respective Game 1s as well.

There were significant differences, of course, such as Kyrie Irving failing to find any traction at Boston (Irving scored 31 points in Game 1 at LA). Doncic had six assists in Game 1 at LA, but only one assist at Boston.

The Celtics were fully healthy, while the Clippers would debut injured All-Star Kawhi Leonard in Game 2.

Both teams are going to look at Game 2 with a sense of optimism. For Dallas, it is a sign they have been there before against a team of similar composition; they wound up bringing a significantly elevated level of physicality to Game 2 to steal home court advantage from the Clippers in April.

But Boston will simply line up Sunday and show that they can do it again. After all, they're not the Clippers.

Kristaps Porziņģis on whether he is 100 percent healthy:

"Tonight was an affirmation to myself that I'm good. Maybe I'm not perfect, but I'm pretty good."

From the 6:29 mark of the second quarter until 4:58 remained in the fourth quarter (which was when Dallas took out its starters), the Mavericks were only outscored by three points.

It takes clever math manipulation like that to take anything positive from Dallas’ decisive 107-89 Game 1 defeat. The Boston Celtics clearly had far superior ideas and players — and then better execution atop that — in the first game played of the 2024 NBA Finals.

That's the main takeaway, of course. There's no sugarcoating what happened.

But if there’s any reason that 6:29-minute mark might matter, it's when Dallas substituted Maxi Kleber in at center. It was the team's choice to embrace pragmatism and excise any cute lineup decisions. It was when the team went to strategies that were built around the Celtics' strengths, not those that got Dallas here. Just to name an obvious one: it was about then that Dallas began switching virtually every screen at any cost.

These are the adjustments that the Mavericks will be studying between Games 1 and 2, and this is the stat that will likely give them optimism that they can figure out what's needed in this series that they didn't offer in Game 1.

Because Dallas has experience with this — it went down 0-1 in both the first and second rounds of this very postseason run — it's likely we'll see a much more competitive Dallas in Game 2. Whether that's enough to change the direction of this series, though, is harder to answer.

Dallas was outscored by 10 in Daniel Gafford's 14 minutes and 19 seconds, and by 15 in Dereck Lively II's 18:29

Lively picked up all five of his fouls in the third quarter, the only time either one of the centers looked effective at any point.

Kristaps Porziņģis came to Boston to play some basketball beyond the first round of the postseason. Naturally, it came against the franchise who brought him in to pair with Luka Dončić and then cast him aside. A calf strain forced him to wait all the way until the NBA Finals, but he made it clear he is ready for the moment.

From the moment he checked in, he dominated.

Dallas threw every defender they could at him in the post and he just shot over everyone. He rarely posts up centers, but still managed to blow by Dereck Lively II to throw it down. Then on defense, Porziņģis ate up everything at the rim. The Mavs kept trying to score in the paint when they couldn’t get 3s off, and Porziņģis managed to contest without fouling consistently.

Now the Mavs have to respond. Their gameplan in Game 2 could focus on keeping Porziņģis away from the paint and making him more of a pick-and-pop player. Or, Dallas can keep daring Porziņģis to hit shots and run hard off bricks, if there are any. Dallas wasn't able to pull him out into space defensively too often and wear him out that way, and Porziņģis was able to keep his minutes down in the low 20s. Dallas has to find a way to wear him down and test how fresh his recovered calf is if this is going to be a close series, because the Mavs hardly created any 3s or generated good enough ball movement to keep up with this Celtics offense.

Joe Mazzulla said Kristaps Porziņģis was great on both ends of the court.

“I thought he played great. That’s the KP that helped us get to where we are today.”

This NBA Finals series will test Jaylen Brown on both ends. He spent most of his time in Game 1 defending Luka Dončić while carrying a heavy offensive burden, as he usually does. He will need to make sharp decisions against a Dallas defense that has been as good as any since early March. The Celtics will need big games from Brown on both ends.

He gave them one in Game 1 with a mighty two-way performance. Brown racked up 21 points, five rebounds, three steals, three blocks and two assists. Beyond the powerful stat line, he delivered timely plays on both ends of the court.

After a nearly perfect first half, the Celtics gave up a 35-14 run spanning the second and third quarters. A Dončić 3-pointer with 4:28 left in the third quarter cut what was once a 29-point Boston lead to 72-64. The crowd went silent, clearly nervous.

Brown steadied the Celtics and then some. He stopped the Dallas run by earning a pair of free throws. He drew Dereck Lively II’s fifth foul to force the impressive rookie big man off the court. Brown denied the high-flying Derrick Jones Jr. at the rim twice on the same possession, then picked up another block moments later. To cap off a 14-0 Celtics run, which came directly after the Mavericks’ big spurt, Brown drilled a 3-pointer from the top of the key and celebrated by blowing a kiss to the crowd.

With Dončić as his primary matchup, Brown won’t get much rest in this series. But if he’s this good the rest of the way, he could soon be able to sleep well.

Tonight is the 18th Game 1 of the NBA Finals in Boston

The Celtics have only lost the NBA Finals twice with homecourt advantage:

• 1958 (lost in 6 to the St. Louis Hawks)
• 1985 (lost in 6 to the Los Angeles Lakers)

1985 was the first time league went to 2-3-2 Finals format.

With five minutes to go, Dallas has thrown the white flag. Joe Mazzulla calls timeout for Boston, but he keeps his starters in.

Now the only question is whether Boston pads its lead in garbage time.

Dallas' third quarter surge and momentum has been erased, and Game 1 once again seems sure to be headed for a 1-0 Celtics series lead.

If you're looking for reasons why this series might be more competitive than this game has been, though, it's probably that Dallas and Boston have played each other to a draw — both scoring 44 apiece — since halfway through the second quarter when Dallas put Maxi Kleber in as a smallball center.

That was probably the moment where the team excised its cute rotation choices and strategy plans, began switching nearly everything, and otherwise started playing in the way they'll probably need to against Boston this series.

Luka Dončić just stopped and put his hands on his knees once Derrick White stole the ball. The Celtics have depleted his tank.