BOSTON — For most of the NBA regular season, there was little question which team was the strongest and deepest. The same will likely be true for much of the NBA Finals, the first of professional basketball's seasons, in 2024.
Jaylen Brown led the Boston Celtics with 22 points, Kristaps Porzingis scored 20 in a spectacular return from a calf injury, and the league's No. 1 overall seed easily beat the Dallas Mavericks 107-89 in Game 1 on Thursday night.
Game 2 will be Sunday at 8 p.m. at TD Garden. The Celtics, seeking a league-record 18th consecutive championship, have won eight straight playoff games since Game 3 of the second round against the Cavaliers.
Boston, which won 64 games in the regular season, seven more than the next-place team and 14 more than the Mavericks, led Dallas by as many as 29 points at the half and closed out the third quarter on a 14-2 run to erase most doubt about the outcome of this highly anticipated series.
“We did a good job of handling the run,” Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla said. With the Mavs gaining momentum, Mazzulla called a timeout with 4:27 left in the third quarter, which helped halt the momentum. “(The run) is going to happen, and you can't stop it. You just have to be poised and tough to get through it.”
Luka Doncic, the league's leading scorer in the regular season, led the Mavericks with 30 points and 10 rebounds but only had one assist, highlighting a tough night for Dallas' offense, who struggled to move the ball and were forced to make a number of difficult shots tonight.
Former Celtics guard Kyrie Irving, who was booed heavily all night, finished with 12 points on 6-of-19 shooting, missed all five of his 3-point attempts and had two assists. The Mavs had just nine assists for the game and just five through the third quarter. P.J. Washington, whom the Mavs acquired at the trade deadline, outscored Irving with 14 points.
“They play mostly one-on-one. They get a lot of coverage, that's why,” Doncic said of the Mavs' isolation-focused offense.
“It was just good individual defense,” Mazzulla added. “I thought our defensive mindset, defensive execution, defensive game plan, positioning, intent was right, and I thought we defended for the most part without committing a foul and played very physical.”
Porzingis, a former Mavericks player traded from Dallas at the 2022 deadline, played his first game since April 29 after straining his calf in Game 4 of the first round. After missing 10 games and 38 days, he seemed to lead a Celtics team that had been so strong for most of the playoffs that they looked like overwhelming favorites after struggling to get past Miami, Cleveland and Indiana with two losses. Each team was without its top player at key times in each series.
For more information on Game 1 of the NBA Finals, AthleticLive blog.
Thursday marked just the second game of Porzingis' career and his first time coming off the bench since the 2016-17 season.
“I had adrenaline pumping through my veins,” Porzingis said. “I prepared as much as I could for this moment.”
“I'm OK with that,” Porzingis said of coming off the bench, “and it makes sense in this situation.”
Porzingis, who entered the game with less than eight minutes left in the first quarter and wore a long compression sleeve on his right leg to protect his calf, scored eight points in the first five minutes. He blocked a Josh Green dunk attempt at the rim — the first of his three impressive blocks, a sign of his improving health — and made 8 of 13 shots, including two from 3-point range.
“KP helped us get to where we are today,” Mazzulla said, though he gave little indication that he wouldn't consider putting Porzingis back in the starting lineup.
Al Horford, 38, continued to serve as Boston's starting center, scoring 10 points with seven rebounds.
Brown, the Eastern Conference Finals MVP, was dominant in every aspect of the game, blocking a dunk attempt and blocking a layup by Irving in the third quarter, while also recording three blocks of his own and contributing three steals and six rebounds.
First-team All-NBA selection and Celtics face Jayson Tatum outperformed Brown slightly with 16 points and 10 rebounds, but Boston didn't need him, in large part because the return of Porzingis restored balance.
Derrick White added 15 points for the Celtics, who made 16 of 41 3-pointers as a team, continuing another trend from the regular season in which Boston was the league's best 3-point shooting team. The Mavericks were 7 of 27 from the field.
“We have to stop the 3-pointers. That's what hurts us the most,” Doncic said. “I think they're the best 3-point shooting team in the NBA, so it's really hard to stop them, especially when they have five guys out and everyone can shoot. Obviously, we have to make more shots. We didn't make enough shots today to beat them, but we have to get better offensively and defensively.”
ESPN NBA commentator Doris Burke made American television history on Thursday when she became the first woman to call a play-by-play game in a major men's sport.
This story will be updated.
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(Photo by Maddie Meyer/Getty Images)
