Some tick for Hardaway. Thought he held up defensively enough to warrant more run.
Everyone does it. He’s a legitimately good defender.
The makes he’s given up tonight have not been from getting beat. Just Luka and Kyrie hitting tough shots.
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Mavs going through their typical third quarter Luka conundrum.
They have to sit Luka, who I think has been pretty bad overall. Defensively he’s catastrophic and basically makes it impossible to get any momentum you need to string together stops. Offensively he’s trying to build the entire thing out of foul baiting. And that only gets worse as his conditioning wears down.
And yet… their offense totally dies when he goes to the bench, because they essentially have to play four average dudes next to Kyrie.
Boston probably gonna sweep.
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I wonder how the Wolves or Nuggets would have fared.
This is going to go down as one of the worst Finals of all time
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I think if his effort and awareness were significantly higher the Mavs are probably still DOA? But he’d actually be the MVP-level guy he seems to think he’s entitled to be.
Agreed on both. The Mavs are cooked because they just aren’t that good. I think the matchups just worked out in a weird way in the West. Despite having no depth, Denver would’ve given Boston the most problems. But Minnesota matched up really well to defend them with the size. Minnesota didn’t have enough wing defenders for Dallas, who just cooked them with two guys. Now you have Dallas, who’s just not nearly as good as Boston, in the Finals.
For Luka… I mean he proved in the WCF you can win with him because he’s so good offensively. But it better be in the right matchup where you can hide him on defense. I’m not sure a top 5 guy should be so matchup dependent. Also I try not to ascribe personal disliking when talking about just the basketball stuff, but I think there’s an argument to be made that the foul baiting and whining takes him out of the game at times. He basically grifted the entire second half tonight of a must win game. Then he fouls out, when two of those six were frustration fouls in the backcourt 45+ feet from the rim. He’ll be anointed top 5 for at least the next half decade but those are pretty thin margins for what you need to win a ring with him.
But again, the team just isn’t good. PJ Washington hit open corner threes and people forgot he’s just PJ Washington. He can’t be 40 minutes a night on a title team. Derrick Jones Jr (who they tried to phase out tonight), Josh Green, Daniel Gafford… these guys should be end of playoff rotation at best.
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Windhorst sounds like an idiot. They don’t get there without Doncic. The Mavs aren’t as talented as Boston that has nothing to do with Luka. He needs to go back massaging LeBron.
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Luka is pretty clearly not 100% as well
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Yeah, he can be critical, but Luka is not “the reason they are not going to win this series.” Dallas just doesn’t have very many good players and Boston has a lot of good players. Luka could have the best attitude in the world and they’d still lose in 4 or 5. This finals has been an enormous mismatch. Dallas is all mediocre role players plus Luka and Kyrie. Boston has an all star lineup.
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Do we think he aggravated it again at some point in the Finals? Because he was healthy enough to torch the Timberwolves. And Boston has been doing this since the first whistle.
Another elephant in the room with Doncic is he’s a good 15-20 pounds heavier than he ideally should be.
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Can’t say it has nothing to do with Luka. Fouling out with 4+ minutes left of a 3 point game is pretty indefensible. And to Windhorst’s point, a bunch of them were pretty easily avoidable despite Luka talking in the press as if he just got a terrible whistle.
27 points on 27 shots. Only 6 assists because he spent the entirety of both middle quarters grifting for fouls. And then on defense, the Celtics entire plan is to attack him every single trip.
You can’t get put in the conversation of the very top tier of players and then also not get heavily criticized for a performance like that.
So I don’t follow the NBA at all, but weren’t the Celtics significantly better than the Mavs all season?
And didn’t the Mavs shoot above their level on C&S threes throughout most of the playoffs, only to shoot significantly worse than their level in the Finals?
A lot of times we like to focus our basketball analysis on very specific things that happen late in the process (i.e. Luka fouling out) but there’s often a more boring explanation in the big picture. In this case, the difference in the two teams has been pretty clear throughout 3 games.
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It’s also a bad matchup for the Mavs.
Denver or Wolves would’ve been a better matchup but they lost in the playoff. That’s just playoff basketball.
The Celtics are too good and too deep for the Mavs to deal with. Luka was inefficient and played stupid all game long. Kyrie played pretty well. The issue is they don’t have anyone who can step up for them in the playoff, and the Celtics are well equipped to deal with them offensively that OKC and Wolves could not deal with.
Tatum was great in the 1st half and his shooting fell off in the 2nd half but his contribution outside of scoring is noteworthy. He showed that he’s an All-Defensive player with his ability to guard 1-5. Jaylen likely is the favorite to win FMVP, but I would consider both Tatum and Brown as co-MVP at this point. Both co-existed without the detriment of the team.
People like to make fun of Joe Mazzula because of his quirky personality and soundbytes, but he can coach. He’s putting them in good position to win the championship.
The Celtics are winning the math game by a mile. They are 43/127 from 3 in the series and the Mavs are 22/78. That’s a pretty staggering difference in attempts. The Celtics have shut off the corner 3’s and the lobs the Mavs relied on throughout the playoffs. They can basically switch everything and don’t need to blitz Luka or Kyrie. They are forced to play one on one and no one else on the Mavs can really create their own offense.
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I think @Mac1992 point regarding the WC matchups is the main point here, the top two seeds ran into perfectly bad matchups and now we have a just ok team in the finals (also PJ Washington and Derrick Jones made like 94% of their threes).
I’m here for Luka slander because I loathe watching him play (Tatum a close second so this is an awesome series for me) but he’s objectively an awesome player, if not last night.
Some other things:
Horford is still AWESOME as a switch big. He’s guarded Luka straight up often and as well as anyone.
The Celtics don’t have a Gobert level rim protector but get helpside shot blocking from basically all of their top 6 guys, even the guards, it’s just eliminated the Dallas centers.
Celtics ability to go five out has given Gafford and Lively just enough extra ground to cover that they can’t protect the rim like against Minnesota.
I think it’s gotta be a bit of both.
The Celtics were a juggernaut all season. But the leap they took this season had a ton to do with adding KP. He’s obviously their rim protector, which most importantly makes them way less reliant on a late 30’s Al Horford. But offensively he provides stability when either the 3’s don’t fall, or the Celtics fall into their worst habit of settling for really tough shots, that you can throw it to the 7’4” guy to shoot over people from high post.
So no KP in game 3 and possibly for the rest of the series was a massive opportunity for Dallas. Obviously they are still the worse team overall. But their path to victory has always been to get to the late moments with the game close. That’s where the major advantage they do have, the two best clutch players by far in the series, plays right into the Celtics weakness of a nervous offense that gets poor looks.
The two reasons that didn’t happen tonight are directly tied to Luka related issues that should be avoidable. The Celtics offense doesn’t devolve into its typical mess because Dallas always presents an easy opportunity of… attack Luka. This in turn completely wears him out (he’s scored 8 points in the 4th quarters of all 3 games combined) and tonight led to 4 4th quarter fouls to where he couldn’t even see crunch time.
They obviously ask him to do too much but I’m not sure he can get a pass for being that much of a liability in a game that would have completely swung the momentum of the series.
This is just a crazy way to talk about it when the only way for the Mavs to win is Luka to play amazing awe-inspiring basketball like he did for most of the playoffs, and find a spot to hide defensively.
The Mavs’ issue is that all of their other players are not very good!
So like obviously your best player plays poorly when you lose, but the fix isn’t “tell Luka to stop bitching and whining” it is, wow maybe we should get some better players around him?
It’s just something that drives me crazy with how people talk about this stuff.
This isn’t about whining or fouls or anything, one team is just significantly better:
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