After over more than a week of
waiting, the pinnacle of the NBA is finally here. And in the first
game, a familiar dominant team set the record straight and set the
tone that could potentially dictate the series’ pace.
The Boston Celtics were their
usual dominant selves despite having more than a week off to
dismantle the visiting Dallas Mavericks in Game 1 of the 2024 NBA
Finals on Day 40 of the 2024 NBA Playoffs on Thursday
night.
The Celtics had an avalanche of
a first quarter, pouring it on from three to lead by 17 right from
the get-go. The lead swelled at its biggest to 29 in the 2nd – with
the Celtics dominating in Kristaps Porzingis’ first game back since
the first round – before settling down to 21 at
halftime.
The Mavericks threatened to
close the gap in the third quarter when Luka Doncic and Kyrie
Irving made a run of their own, cutting the lead down to just 8
points. However, the Celtics struck again and never looked back
until the final buzzer sounded.
Some takeaways from this game
include:
- Boston taking away Dallas’ biggest weapons from
the first three rounds: lob plays and three-point corner shooting.
It was basically nonexistent in this game and credit to the
Celtics’ defensive gameplan for taking it away - Celtics putting on their bigger wings (Tatum
and Brown) on the Mavericks’ screening bigs to force a switch onto
Doncic. The Celtics usually switch at a high rate and it gave the
Mavs some problems in the pick-and-roll as Doncic was not able to
exploit slower players - Kyrie Irving with a rare bad shooting night
after being spectacular in the playoffs thus far; would likely
bounce back big time in Game 2 - One of the best three-point shooting teams in
the league, the Celtics lived and died by the three and they were
greatly rewarded for it, going 16-42 shooting (38
percent)
Game 2 of the 2024 NBA Finals
continues on Sunday night still at the Boston Garden in Boston,
MA.
Check out our recap
here:
Jaylen Brown stuffed the stat sheet as he
leads Boston in a Game 1 win in the
#NBAFinals against Dallas 😤J. Brown 📊 22 PTS | 7-12 FG | 6 REB | 2 AST | 3 STL | 3 BLK
Other top performers:
K. Porzingis 📊 20 PTS | 8-13 FG | 2-4 3P | 3 REB | 3 BLK
J. Tatum 📊 16 PTS | 11 REB |… pic.twitter.com/UIRG9XA7JR— BasketballNews.com (@basketbllnews)
June 7, 2024
