Against the NBA’s best defense over the last quarter of the season, the Boston Celtics got just about whatever they wanted offensively.
Inside, if and when they probed the paint, they logged a franchise-best 60.4% blow-by rate, which measures how often a dribbler bursts past his defender. The Celtics also shot a perfect 15-for-15 from the restricted area.
On the perimeter, there was a similar tale of dominance for the Celtics. Boston took 42 triples and hit 38.1% of them, while Dallas launched 27 and connected on just 25.9%. Kyrie Irving, who went 6-for-19 with 12 points, was 0-for-5 from outside.
Key Area of the Court
There are exactly 168 square feet of real estate on the court that deserve more attention than the rest. How each team performs within that space could determine the 2024 NBA champion.
For the Mavericks, their success often comes from the corner three-point shots, a crucial element in their offensive strategy.
Defensive Strategy and Luka Doncic
Throughout Game 1, Luka Doncic, the league’s most double-teamed player each of the past two seasons, struggled to find open teammates behind the arc.
He logged just one assist, his career playoff low and the fewest he has ever had in a game when logging 35 minutes or more.
This wasn’t merely a case of the Mavericks missing shots off his passes. He had six potential assists, less than half of his playoff average of 15.4 potential dimes entering Game 1. The Celtics’ starting five features five good defenders, including two—Jrue Holiday and Derrick White—who made this season’s All-Defensive Team.
With such stingy one-on-one defense and a switch-heavy approach, Boston blitzed pick-and-roll ball handlers just 1.3% of the time this season, the NBA’s second-lowest rate.
The team’s five-man lineup with Holiday, White, Jaylen Brown, Kristaps Porzingis, and Jayson Tatum blitzed just 11 times total all season, two of those against Doncic.
In Game 1, Boston blitzed Doncic twice; one play resulted in Doncic missing a shot, and the other ended with him turning it over.
“They mostly play one-on-one. They don’t send a lot of help. That’s why,” Doncic said when asked why he was able to muster only a single assist in Game 1.
Boston’s Defensive Tactics
Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla understands that limiting Doncic’s passing can be a winning strategy. “We’re not here to stop those guys. We’re here to play a complete game of basketball and have an understanding of how each possession has an effect on everything else,” he said. “They’re going to score. That’s what they do best.”
By reducing Doncic’s options as a passer, the Celtics also take away his ability to get the ball to the corner—an area of the floor that Dallas has benefited from more than any other team in basketball.
The Mavericks launched more corner threes—11.3 per game—than any team during the regular season.
They hit 39.4% of them against the Thunder in the West semifinals and 42.2% against the Wolves’ top-ranked defense in the conference finals. Dallas averaged a league-best 4.6 corner threes per game this postseason, entering Game 1.
But in Game 1, the Mavericks managed just one corner triple—a meaningless trey by Josh Green with 58 seconds left and the game already decided—and three corner attempts.
Luka’s Offensive Impact
Midway through the second quarter of Game 4 of the Western Conference finals against the Minnesota Timberwolves, Doncic dribbled around a screen at the top of the key.
He had All-NBA guard Anthony Edwards at his back and 7-foot-1 Rudy Gobert, the four-time Defensive Player of the Year, standing in front of him, blocking his path to the basket.
Two other Minnesota defenders, Mike Conley and All-Defensive Team pick Jaden McDaniels, were standing ready on either block, just in case Doncic managed to bowl his way past Gobert into the paint.
Despite dribbling to his right and appearing to look toward Green in the right corner, Doncic whipped a skip pass back across his body to the left corner, delivering a dime right into wing Derrick Jones Jr.’s shooting pocket.
Conley, who’d cheated over a step or two to contain a potential Doncic drive to the basket, didn’t have enough time to recover. And the result was a wide-open triple from the southpaw.
“That pass, he makes that look simple,” TNT color analyst Stan Van Gundy said while calling the game. “This is just a laser—right on target, off the dribble.”
Mavericks’ Offensive Strategy
Sequences like these gauge the health of the Mavericks’ offensive attack—and will determine if they make this a series.
Doncic finished the regular season with a league-leading 170 assist opportunities off skip passes he threw that led to corner three-point tries, more than twice as many as Tyrese Haliburton, who had the NBA’s second most.
His ability to manipulate defenses—scaring them with his scoring ability by putting pressure on the rim, which forces the defense to lose the other players on the floor—creates massive pockets of space and explains how Dallas’ role players often get into a scoring rhythm of their own.
Jones, for instance, had an average of nine feet of open space to shoot when lining up his three-point attempts during the season, the second-most space of any player who had at least 150 tries from deep.
As a team, the Mavericks enjoyed an average of 8.36 feet of separation as three-point shooters when receiving a kickout pass from Doncic, the most separation created by any player this season.
But that might not matter against this Celtics defense. Boston held opponents to a league-low 35.2% shooting from the corners in the regular season and has been even better in the playoffs, limiting opponents to an NBA-low 23.5%.
The Celtics hit an NBA-best 43% of their own corner three-pointers during the regular season, feasting specifically on drive-and-kicks to the perimeter, logging 141 points per 100 possessions on such plays this postseason, the best of any NBA playoff team since tracking began in 2013-14.
In Game 1, the Celtics shot 6-for-14, almost identical to their 43% on the season, from the corner.
The Importance of Perimeter Defense
Of course, there is more to consider in all of this. If the vaunted Boston defense opts to continue to single-cover Doncic while staying synchronized to its perimeter assignments, it raises the possibility of the Mavericks scoring in a totally different way: by going over the top, when Doncic—and to a lesser extent, Irving—opts to throw lobs.
Kidd said Doncic needs to be more aggressive and “take the layups” that Boston is all but encouraging him to try.
If and when Doncic is able to bait the Celtics into surrounding him, he might find rookie center Dereck Lively II, who has changed the complexion of the Dallas offense, as a lob threat.
The long-limbed Lively made every single one of the 16 shots he attempted against the Wolves, who were repeatedly punished for focusing so much on Doncic.
Daniel Gafford was effective as a vertical spacer in the conference finals, too. A wild statistic to help illustrate how much the bigs have dominated in Dallas’ alley-oop game: Lively, Gafford, and Jones have all connected on more alley-oops individually than any other team has during these playoffs. (Lively has 22, Gafford has 17, and Jones has 10. By contrast, the Nuggets, collectively, had nine.)
It shows just how lethal the Mavericks can be when a defense becomes hyper-focused on Doncic and the shooters he’s considering passing to.
It’s this high-level tug-of-war—protecting the four corners and showing defensive attention toward Doncic as opposed to defensive obsession with him—that could decide the series.
The Celtics’ ability to limit Doncic’s passing and shut down the Mavericks’ corner three-point attempts will be crucial in their quest for an 18th championship banner.
Conversely, the Mavericks’ success hinges on their ability to break through Boston’s elite defense and find open looks from the perimeter.
As the series progresses, these 168 square feet of the court will be the battleground that determines the 2024 NBA champion.
The Information is Collected from NBA and ESPN.
