The Celtics can't stop Doncic. Does it matter? And three more burning Finals questions
What I'll be watching for as the Finals unfold
The NBA Finals are finally, mercifully, almost here. For at least four more nights, I can watch NBA basketball instead of hanging with my family, reading a book, or bettering myself as a person.
Dallas and Boston are very different teams with disparate personnel and strategies. Coaches Jason Kidd and Joe Mazzulla are two of the most creative and experimental minds around. We’re going to see some weird stuff!
Boston won both regular season meetings, only one of which occurred after the Mavs’ trade deadline makeover (also the sole game Kristaps Porzingis played).
At a high level, this series may well be decided by who makes the most threes. Boston and Dallas were the number-one and number-two most prolific three-point shooting teams in the regular season. Boston drove open threes with their drive-and-kick game, while Dallas created oodles of triples with the pick-and-roll mastery of Luka Doncic sucking in the defense.
But three-point shooting isn’t the only thing that matters. Here are four other questions that will determine the next NBA champion.
How does Kristaps Porzingis look?
Porzingis injured his calf (the soleus, more specifically) in the first round. Initial reporting suggested he could be back for Game 4 of the Eastern Conference Finals, but the Celtics’ sweep of Indiana gave Porzingis more time to focus on healing and rehabilitation.
According to reports, Porzingis still hasn’t been doing much contact in practice, but he was seen running and shooting. Coach Mazzulla has been typically coy when asked about KP and stated he’s “not sure” if Porzingis would be back for Game 1.
All other signs point to a Game 1 return, though, which is great news for Boston fans. The Celtics need him.
Porzingis’ three-point abilities will be a huge factor in pulling Dallas’ centers away from the hoop. The Dallas defense sealed off the hoop after their midseason trades for PJ Washington and Daniel Gafford, boasting the lowest field goal percentage allowed at the rim.
Gafford and rookie center Dereck Lively are elite shotblockers, but neither is comfortable getting all the way out to Porzingis when he’s spotting up a metric mile behind the three-point line. Unfortunately, nobody else has the size to bother him. In the one game Porzingis played against Dallas, he lit the Mavericks up with deep jumpers over the top of smaller defenders:
Despite that, some teams have dabbled with wings on Porzingis and their center on Jrue Holiday, preferring to let Porzingis shoot from the midrange rather than from deep. Boston has generally made them pay (Holiday is an excellent three-point shooter in his own right and a mean screener, and Porzingis has been successful in the post), but it’s a strategy I wouldn’t be shocked to see Dallas at least try.
I wonder how much Luka Doncic we might see on Porzingis. The Celtics manufactured that switch a few times in the regular season. Doncic is so strong he doesn’t give up much ground to Porzingis in the post, but he can occasionally get caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Porzingis post-ups might be a mechanism to get Doncic in foul trouble, something Doncic uncharacteristically struggled with at times against Boston in the regular season (five fouls in the first meeting and two quick ones in the second game). But Porzingis is the only starting Celtic who doesn’t have a major speed advantage over Doncic, and if he can’t make Doncic pay in the post, he might be a clever hiding place for short spurts.
Porzingis’ impact figures to be even greater on the defensive end. Boston is allowing opponents to shoot an outrageous 71% at the rim in these playoffs, most of which occurred without Porzingis. To be fair, they haven’t allowed many attempts from close range, but they’ve mostly played teams without their best on-ball creators.
Dallas shot the second-fewest attempts at the rim in the regular season, but that number is misleading. Much of their offense is predicated on pressuring the rim with the omnipresent threat of a lob threat, as I just discussed here, and the Mavs shot 71% at the rim themselves. Defenses pack the paint to take away the lob, opening up passing lanes to corner threes, where the Mavericks feasted all season (second-most in the league).
But opponents shot -6.1% worse at the rim when Porzingis was on the floor than when he was off. As good as Al Horford and Luke Kornet have been this season defensively, neither can protect the hoop like the 7’3” Porzingis. His sheer size will be an enormous factor in combating Dallas’ alley-oop threats. Look at poor Al Horford trying and miserably failing to deal with a driving Doncic and a lurking Dereck Lively here:
Obviously, that’s uncharacteristically poor defense, but Horford simply doesn’t have the size to take much away in that scenario. Porzingis does. Boston will bring some help, but they generally trust their on-ball defenders to do their job.
There will be a fun cat-and-mouse game all series whenever KP is on the floor. The Celtics want to keep their bigs, particularly Porzingis, by the rim, and Luka Doncic desperately wants to pull them away. The Celtics responded in the regular season by stationing Porzingis on Dallas’ power forward, PJ Washington, and putting Tatum on center Lively.
Luka had no problem using Washington as the screener when that occurred. But Washington pops as often as he rolls, and he doesn’t have the same vertical gravity as Gafford or Lively, which limits Luka’s ability to get a defender on his back and drive in. I don’t have granular tracking data, but anecdotally, it sure feels like a lot of the Doncic/Washington P&R ended up in a deep jumper for one or the other:
If Porzingis stays on Washington, those are the shots Boston will live with. Washington had ample opportunities to make Boston pay in this action, too, but he couldn’t cash in, which segues nicely into my next question.
What will PJ do?
Washington will be on the court for his defense, as he’ll be tasked with slowing Jayson Tatum and, occasionally, Jaylen Brown. He’ll play plenty of minutes, so what he brings offensively will be one of the defining issues of the series.
Washington struggled with his three-ball in the regular season and the playoffs, outside of a glorious series against Oklahoma City in which he shot 23-for-49 (47%) in six games. Dallas survived against Minnesota and Los Angeles without his best efforts. Still, it’s hard to imagine them doing so against a far more complete Boston team if he can’t be respectable from deep.
Of course, Washington is more than just a 3-and-D machine. He has a bit of self-creation juice and more creativity than people realize. Here, he puts up a sneaky push shot right in a shocked Porzingis’ face:
Tatum didn’t have much trouble scoring on Washington in their one matchup this season, but he was limited as a playmaker (just three assists and four turnovers). Dallas focused their team efforts on Tatum, and he missed or was slow to recognize several opportunities for wide-open teammates. This ends up being a beautiful pass to Xavier Tillman, who bobbles it out of bounds, but it’s one that needed to be delivered much earlier:
If Tillman converts, that’s a highlight play. But so many highlights are an offensive player doing something difficult. Winning is what happens when a player makes the correct play quickly, and earlier, crisper passes are the only way to beat a defense as good as Dallas.
Washington is just one part of a teamwide effort to put Tatum in a one-dimensional scoring box, but as the point-of-attack defender, he’s the most important cog. Dallas can live with Tatum scoring 30 points; they can’t live with him scoring 30 and having eight assists. Washington’s pressure will be critical to that gameplan.
Boston can’t stop Doncic. Does it matter?
After a relatively slow, injury-hampered start to the postseason, Doncic is back to full force. The stage is set for him to make a run at the “World’s Best Player” belt (although it would take a historic effort to wrestle that from Jokic, in my opinion).
Not many recent superstars have faced as arduous a playoff path as Doncic: Oklahoma City was the league’s fourth-best defense, Minnesota was the best, and Boston was the second-best (and we’re not including the Clippers, who were no joke defensively either). That’s a murderer’s row, yet Doncic roasted the first two teams over an open fire like so many holiday chestnuts. Boston has to avoid the same fate if they want to win.
Or do they?