2024 Playoffs- 4th Round: Boston Celtics - Dallas Mavericks

[DanSchwartzgan]

Part of being able to impose our will with our bigs has been that the other teams have had people we could cheat off of (often a big).  That isn't the case here.  Everyone on the Celtics can make you pay from deep.  I felt pretty confident about the Minnesota series because I could see matchups that would allow our stars to thrive offensively and I could easily see how our D could stop their stars.  I'm confident in our ability to score against Boston, but they present the biggest challenge yet to our D.  There will be games where they are hitting shots that we just won't have an answer for (hopefully not four of those games).

I think the most interesting matchup is Lively vs. KP.  If we win this series it is probably because Lively really is a star and we just don't yet understand how good he really is.  If we lose this series it is probably because Gafford/Maxi weren't enough for KP/Horford.  I can see us winning the Lively minutes.  I'm a little worried about the non-Lively minutes.  Part of our formula so far has been to steal one of the first two games.  If we go down 0-2 we might have to blink and be the team that makes the first big adjustment (which would be much more Maxi at center and much less Gafford).  As you say, if this happens the issue will be at the defensive end for Dallas.

Some of this ended up being pretty accurate (I thought Jason Timpf was spot on when he suggested there might be two blowout wins for Boston).  KP's impact crushed Lively's impact.  Neither Gafford nor Maxi was an adequate answer in any way.

But, I was dead wrong about our ability to score.  I don't think last night had much to do with some 5-out vs. not style of offense.  We lost because they have 5 defenders who don't need help to stay in front of our players.  Their rim protectors can hit 3's.  Good for them.  But first and foremost, they protected the rim.  They sped us up (except for a brief moment in the 3rd) and made us take much harder 3's above the break.  Not only did Luka only have one assist.  He only generated six assist opportunities (which we hit one of).  Let that sink in for a moment.

I think we all knew Boston would be tough on nights they were hitting shots.  I think we also knew they'd take certain things away from our offense.  I'm not sure I believed they would be able to take away almost everything we try to do.  We didn't win any of the sub statistical categories to make up for the shooting disparity.  Game over.  Just like the hand-wringing after game one against LAC, this will long be forgotten if we steal game two.  If we don't steal game two, it is going to take something Herculean to get this to six or seven games.