2024 NBA Finals Preview: Celtics vs. Mavericks brings top-tier star power – and plenty of drama

This year more than ever, there’s no shortage of storylines in the NBA Finals.

The title bout between the Boston Celtics and Dallas Mavericks features an abundance of big-name star power, two teams that rolled through their respective conferences, and plenty of soap-opera-like drama.

Dallas’ Kyrie Irving is set to play another postseason series against the Celtics, his former team from which he left on less-than-ideal terms.

There’s similar intrigue with Boston’s Kristaps Porzingis, whose short-lived stint in Dallas also ended with an unceremonious breakup.

Luka Doncic, the Mavericks’ all-world do-it-all superstar, seeks his first championship.

So does Boston’s dynamic duo of Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, who are trying once again to finally finish off a playoff run on top.

It all begins Thursday night, when Game 1 tips off at Boston’s TD Garden at 8:30 p.m., airing on ABC.

Boston enters as the favorite after winning an NBA-best 64 games in the regular season and totaling only two losses during its playoff run through an injury-plagued Eastern Conference.

It took the Celtics five games to win a first-round series against a Miami Heat team that was missing Jimmy Butler and Terry Rozier.

Boston again won in five games in the second round over the Cleveland Cavaliers, who were without Jarrett Allen and, by the end, Donovan Mitchell and Caris LeVert.

In the Eastern Conference Finals, the Celtics swept the Indiana Pacers, whose star, Tyrese Haliburton, left Game 2 with a hamstring injury and did not return in the series.

Boston was favored in each of those matchups, though given the diminished state of each opponent, the Celtics went largely untested through the first three rounds and weren’t forced to make the degree of adjustments a team normally would en route to the Finals.

After all of that dominance, this is a championship-or-bust season for the Celtics, who advanced to the Eastern Conference Finals in six of the last eight years — and to the Finals in 2022 — but haven’t won a title in that stretch.

Brown, who is averaging 25.0 points per game this postseason, has been with Boston for all eight of those years. Tatum, whose 26.0 points per game lead the team, has been there the last seven. Joe Mazzulla, an assistant during that 2022 run, is in his first Finals as Celtics head coach.

Tatum, in particular, wasn’t at his best in the 2022 Finals, which the Celtics lost to the Golden State Warriors in six games. Tatum scored 12 points on 3-of-17 shooting in Game 1 that year, then had 13 points on 6-of-18 shooting with five turnovers in Boston’s series-clinching defeat in Game 6.

“It’s a lot that myself, and we, can learn from that experience being in the Finals, and this time, this go-around, is a lot different,” Tatum said this week. “You don’t always get a second chance, so really just looking at it as a second chance and trying to simplify things as much as we can.”

The most adversity Boston faced this postseason was the loss of Porzingis to a calf strain during Game 2 of the opening round. Porzingis has not played since, and while he said this week he expects to be available for Game 1, he acknowledged he’s unsure if he’s 100% healthy.

The 7-2 Porzingis played parts of three seasons with the Mavericks but never quite fit. During his first postseason with Dallas in 2020, Porzingis missed the final three games of a first-round series loss to the Los Angeles Clippers with a lateral meniscus tear.

In 2021, Porzingis largely disappeared during Dallas’ first-round loss in seven games to the Clippers, averaging only 13.1 points and 5.4 rebounds per game in the series.

Dallas traded Porzingis during the subsequent 2021-22 season to the Wizards for Spencer Dinwiddie and Davis Bertans, who then helped the Mavs reach the Western Conference Finals in 2022.

“I’m happy for everybody in Dallas,” Porzingis said this week. “A lot of great relationships I have there and I think they deserve to have some success like they’ve had this season. It’s going to be fun going up against my old team, going back to Dallas.”

The Celtics acquired Porzingis in an offseason trade with Washington, hoping the sharp-shooting, shot-blocking matchup nightmare would help put them over the top. His arrival came during a transformative offseason in which Boston also added veteran point guard Jrue Holiday, a six-time selection for the NBA’s All-Defensive teams.

With Porzingis and Holiday in the mix, the Celtics finished second in the NBA in scoring at 120.6 points per game; made 140 more 3-pointers than any other team; and finished fifth in defense by holding opponents to 109.2 points per game.

Holiday shot 42.9% on 3-point attempts in the regular season, while fellow guard Derrick White shot 39.6%. Holiday and White both made the NBA’s All-Defensive second team, while Tatum and Brown are also strong defenders. That gives Boston options as they try to limit Dallas’ high-scoring backcourt tandem of Doncic and Irving.

The 6-6 Brown primarily guarded the 6-7 Doncic during the teams’ meetings in the regular season.

Now in his sixth NBA season, Doncic is set to appear in his first NBA Finals. The 25-year-old point guard from Slovenia averaged 28.8 points, 9.6 rebounds and 8.8 assists through the first three rounds of the playoffs, despite dealing with knee and ankle injuries.

Doncic’s aptitude for tough shot-making — be it step-back 3-pointers or improbable and-1s — remained on display throughout the Western Conference playoffs, during which the fifth-seeded Mavs beat the Clippers in six games; the top-seeded Oklahoma City Thunder in six; and the Minnesota Timberwolves in five.

His highest scoring output of these playoffs came in Game 5 against Minnesota, when he poured in 20 of his 36 points in the first quarter.

After trading Porzingis and letting Jalen Brunson — who, like Doncic, is at his best as a high-usage focal point — leave for the Knicks in 2022, the Mavericks found Doncic an ideal running mate in Irving.

Irving arrived in a February 2023 trade with the Nets, ending his tumultuous three-and-a-half-year tenure with Brooklyn.

Irving sat out most of the 2021-22 season with the Nets after declining to meet New York City’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate. He was then suspended for eight games the next season after tweeting a link to a documentary that critics slammed as antisemitic.

But Irving has fit in seamlessly with Dallas, playing an off-ball role next to Doncic as he did with LeBron James in Cleveland and James Harden in Brooklyn.

His and Doncic’s partnership lived up to its sky-high potential during the Western Conference Finals, when the stars scored at least 30 points apiece in three of the five games. Dallas won all three.

Unlike Doncic, Tatum or Brown, the 32-year-old Irving already boasts a championship, having won the 2016 title with Cleveland. Irving’s tie-breaking 3-pointer over Golden State’s Steph Curry with 53 seconds remaining in Game 7 of those Finals proved to be the game-winner.

Irving returned to the Finals in 2017, then requested a trade, which would allow him to show what he could accomplish without James. Cleveland sent him to Boston, where he spent two years, including a debut season in which he missed the playoffs due to injury.

Famously, Irving declared in October 2018 that he planned to re-sign with the Celtics, then joined the Nets the following summer instead.

After a 2021 playoff game against the Celtics with Brooklyn, Irving stomped on the center-court logo at Boston’s TD Garden. That same day, a fan was arrested for throwing a water bottle at Irving.

In a playoff rematch in 2022, Irving flipped off a Celtics fan after making a jumper, earning himself a $50,000 fine.

“Sometimes in sports, it’s literally about the end goal and the result in what you accomplish, and that’s one thing, but we’re still human at the end of the day,” Irving said this week of his Celtics stint. “I wasn’t my best self during that time, so when I look back on it, I just see it as a time where I learned how to let go of things and learned how to talk through my emotions.”

Like the Celtics, the Mavericks retooled their roster on their way to this year’s Finals, though Dallas did much of its heavy lifting at the trade deadline.

The Mavs’ February acquisitions of forward P.J. Washington from Charlotte and center Daniel Gafford from Washington added much-needed physicality to the frontcourt, transforming a defense that has played well this postseason.

In Washington, the Mavericks received a catch-and-shoot 3-point threat who exploded for 29, 27 and 21 points during consecutive playoff games against Oklahoma City. His go-ahead three throws in the waning seconds of Game 6 against the Thunder put the Mavericks up for good, as did his late 3-pointers in Games 1 and 3 of the Timberwolves series.

Washington has regularly taken on tough defensive assignments, including Minnesota’s Karl-Anthony Towns, who averaged only 15.0 points and went 3-of-22 on 3-point attempts through the first three games of that series.

Gafford, meanwhile, gave the Mavericks another rim protector and a lob threat for Doncic. The veteran formed a formidable duo with rookie center Dereck Lively, who moved to the bench with Gafford’s arrival and has thrived in the role.

Gafford and Lively’s presences around the rim loom less large defensively against a team like Boston that lives and dies with 3-pointers, making wing defenders Washington and Derrick Jones Jr. even more important. Not known for their defense, Doncic and Irving have also stepped up on that side of the ball during the playoffs.

This is the Mavericks’ first trip to the Finals since 2011, when they won the first title in franchise history behind a red-hot superstar in Dirk Nowitzki and a supporting cast that fit perfectly around him. That supporting cast included a 38-year-old Jason Kidd, who is now in his third season — and first Finals — as Dallas’ head coach.

This year’s Mavericks feature a similar formula with Doncic in the Nowitzki role.

A championship would bolster the already impressive résumé of Doncic, who boasts five first-team All-NBA selections through his six seasons and finished third in MVP voting this year.

A title would etch Tatum and Brown’s names into Celtics history, immortalizing them as the latest stars to lead Boston to the promised land.

And a series victory would give the Celtics their 18th championship, breaking a tie with the Los Angeles Lakers for the most among NBA teams.

Clearly, legacies are on the line.