NBA Finals Game 1 updates (2024)

The Boston Celtics left no doubt in Game 1 of the NBA Finals, routing the Dallas Mavericks from the opening tip. Kristaps Porziņģis came off the bench in his first game back from a calf injury to carry Boston to a 17-point first-quarter lead, and Jaylen Brown led a third-quarter response after Dallas briefly cut the lead to single digits. The final score was 107-89.

Scroll down to relive The Athletic's live coverage of Game 1. Here are some highlights:

• Jay King: Kristaps Porziņģis returns to Celtics, and he’s ‘a matchup nightmare’ for Mavericks
• David Aldridge: The Celtics might have perfected the modern NBA offense
• Tim Cato: Mavericks aren't panicking because they've been here before
• Steve Buckley: Celtics’ 14-0 response after timeout makes Joe Mazzulla look like coaching wizard
• Jared Weiss: Jaylen Brown takes over at the rim to lead Celtics to Game 1 win
• John Hollinger: If Mavericks’ stars can’t beat Celtics 1-on-1, this series is over
• Joe Vardon: Kyrie Irving thought Boston crowd 'was going to be a little louder'
• Law Murray: The similarities between this game and Game 1 of Clippers-Mavericks

Before the game, the Celtics showed a video tribute for Bill Walton, the NBA legend who recently passed away at the age of 71.

BOSTON — As nobody has come up with a Top 100 Greatest Timeouts in Sports History, would it be OK if we submitted Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla, Game 1, 2024 NBA Finals, for consideration?

You be the judge. For while the Celtics’ 107-89 victory over the Dallas Mavericks Thursday night at TD Garden doesn’t hint at much in the way of drama and late-night intrigue, Boston was leading by just 8 points with 4:27 remaining in the third quarter. Which is when Mazzulla called for the timeout. For context, it should be noted that Boston led by as many as 29 points in the first half, what with the fully armed and operational battle station known as Kristaps Porziņģis coming off the bench and scoring 11 points in the first quarter alone.

Imagine: Up by 29, and then up by 8.

But then came a 14-0 Celtics run that effectively ended the Mavericks’ hopes for a never-to-be-forgotten NBA Finals victory. For those looking for even more context, let’s not forget that one of the biggest criticisms leveled at Mazzulla last year, when Celtics president of basketball operations Brad Stevens plucked him from a pack of obscure lieutenants and handed him the coaching keys, was the how and the why of Mazzulla’s timeouts. He was criticized for calling them too soon, too late, too often, and, to be honest, it was one of the reasons Mazzulla’s critics wanted him one and done.

So, yes, if the guy calls a timeout after a 29-point lead has been frittered away to an 8-point lead, and if the result of that is an exciting 14-0 run, that’s big news. Especially if the 14-0 run is stitched together by one of those beloved-by-coaches Total Team Efforts, this one including a dunk by Porziņģis and 3-pointers by Al Horford, Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum. Add three free throws by Brown, and, presto, you’ve got your 14-0 run and a timeout screaming for a documentary, even if the coach who called it didn’t do much screaming at all.

What did Mazzulla say?

“I don’t know,” Porziņģis said, “but Joe always gives us the right message. He can be emotionless if that’s what we need. He can come in completely even keel and give us the right message and what to focus on. And then he’ll give us some motivation if that’s what we need, some energy. I think he was just even keel and giving us some answers to what we needed to do out there. And that was it. We trust him with his leadership.”

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DALLAS — The Dallas Mavericks have been down 0-1 in a series twice during their run to the NBA Finals. They’ve been here six times in seven series with Jason Kidd at the helm.

They know what the “tomorrow” of a game like this, a 107-89 smashing at the hands of the Boston Celtics in Thursday’s Game 1, feels like. More than they’d like, perhaps, but they know.

So Friday will look and feel familiar to them.

“It’s just about the positives (and) what can we do to build on them,” Kidd said Thursday night. “We’ll talk about that tomorrow. Understanding the small things, the physicality. We have to be better at that.”

Most Mavericks players said they’re ready for Friday’s film session. Already, they’re most interested in what could be better.

“I feel like (the Celtics) don’t need to give us that boost,” rookie center Dereck Lively II said. “We all feel it in our soul.”

P.J. Washington echoed what Lively said: “The biggest thing was strategy (for me). Guys have been in the right mental space.”

It’s that belief that helped Dallas overcome 0-1 series deficits against the LA Clippers in the first round and the Oklahoma City Thunder in the second. It’s why the team’s emotional leader, Kyrie Irving, recalled an unusual feeling from those tomorrows.

“I will say that the next day was pretty cool, you know,” said Irving, who struggled with 12 points on 6-of-19 shooting Thursday. “To see us still joined together in practice, still go through our day-to-day routines and rituals, and just hold each other up and hold each other accountable, but in a very healthy way. We are very honest about what we can continue to do better, and then we are very honest about how we can coach one another to be better.”

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BOSTON — With 8 minutes left on the pregame clock Thursday night, the TD Garden Jumbotron flashed a live video of Kristaps Porziņģis heading down a back hallway toward the court.

Porziņģis’ teammates were already on the floor, warming up for Game 1 of the NBA Finals. In all likelihood, Porziņģis had stayed back in the locker room area to undergo some last-minute treatment on the injured calf that sidelined him for longer than five weeks. If he had instead been looking to maximize the drama surrounding his return to the Boston lineup, he could not have timed his walk through the Celtics tunnel any better.

The camera focused on Porziņģis as he shook the hand of a staff member in the hallway and proceeded to walk past the Celtics bench for his first appearance since April 29. Seeing the 7-foot-2 center on the screen, the crowd, already eager for Boston to open the NBA Finals against the Dallas Mavericks, ramped up the noise by several decibel levels. As impressive as the Celtics were earlier in the playoffs, the piece to complete them was ambling his way toward the parquet floor.

“It is a relief to have him back,” Jayson Tatum said, “because we know we’re a much better team when he’s back.”

How would Porziņģis look physically? In a series against his former team, would he be prepared for every challenge of his first career appearance beyond the first round of the playoffs? For Jaylen Brown, any remaining questions dissolved during the first half of Boston’s 107-89 Game 1 win. Porziņģis, who finished with 20 points on 8-of-13 shooting over 21 minutes, wasn’t just healthy enough to play. Parachuting into the finals after a 38-day layoff, he was ready to unlock pure basketball gold.

“He was just making play after play,” Brown said. “And it was just like, all right, he’s back. There was no question about it then.”

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BOSTON — Twenty years after the Seven-Seconds-or-Less Phoenix Suns shook up the NBA with an offense the likes of which the league had never seen or tried to defend before, the Boston Celtics have taken things to the next level.

Behold the perfect modern NBA offense, matching 3-point volume and efficacy with ruthlessly efficient midrange shooting, with the occasional drives, dives and triples from the best forward tandem in the league in Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown crushing opponents’ will.

The Celtics did the same thing to the Dallas Mavericks in Game 1 of the NBA Finals on Thursday that they’ve done to opposing defenses all season. They stretched the Mavs to the breaking point, then broke them behind a barrage of first-half 3s and a sensational return to action from Kristaps Porziņģis. Even after Dallas cut a 29-point first-half deficit to 8 midway through the third quarter, Boston had plenty left in the tank to stretch its lead right back to 20 and put away Game 1, 107-89.

Like a great boxer, Boston just bludgeons you with punches from all angles and speeds. Thursday, it was Porziņģis — in his first action since straining his calf in Game 1 of the first round against the Miami Heat in April — who set the tone off the bench. Dallas threw everyone it could at the 7-foot-2 big man: Luka Dončić, Derrick Jones, Jaden Hardy, rookie Dereck Lively II. No one slowed him, much less stopped him; Porziņģis made 7 of 9 shots and scored 18 of his 20 points in the first half, raining jumpers from the elbows and nail. The Cs made 16 of 42 from deep, including three quick ones to end the third quarter and put the Mavericks right back in their place after getting within 72-64.

At the same time, Brown was turning the game back in Boston’s favor as well by drawing Lively’s fourth and fifth personal fouls within a minute, forcing Dallas to bench its big man, who defends best in space.

“When a team goes on a run, you got to manage it, you got to stay composed, and you got to keep playing basketball,” Brown said of that end-of-quarter stretch. “It’s almost like you just have short-term memory a little bit, like the team’s not even on a run. You got to play smart basketball and make great plays to get us on a (run), get our flow back, and I think in that third quarter, I got to the free-throw line. I think that helped us get going. Then we made some kick-outs to the corner. Al (Horford) got a 3. We was able to get some good offense going.”

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BOSTON — New Englanders booed Kyrie Irving on Thursday night. They jeered when he missed shots. They told him, in unison, he is a verb worse than “stinks.”

Irving’s reply, following his first NBA Finals game against his former team, at TD Garden, the building he called home for two injury-plagued, tumultuous seasons?

“I thought it was going to be a little louder in here.”

Safe bet Celtics fans meet Irving’s expectations in Game 2 on Sunday.

“We’ve got to take those 3s away — that’s what hurt us the most,” Luka Dončić said postgame. “I think they are the best 3-point shooting team in the NBA, so sometimes it’s really hard to take those away. Especially when they have five guys out and they can all shoot.

“Obviously, we’ve got to make more. We didn’t make enough shots today to beat them. But we’ve got to be better on both ends.”

“I liked the way we handled their run,” Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla said, whose timeout with 4:27 left in the third quarter helped stop the Mavs’ building momentum. “(Runs) are gonna happen, you’re not gonna stop that. You just have to have the poise and toughness to work through it.”

“That’s just good individual defense,” Mazzulla added. “I thought our defensive mindset, our defensive execution, our defensive game plan, our positioning, we had the right intentions and I thought we played really physical, for the most part, defending without fouling.”

I saw the Clippers dominate the Mavericks at home to begin the 2024 postseason in similar fashion to how the Celtics dominated the Mavericks at home to begin the 2024 NBA Finals.

The score of the Mavericks-Clippers Game 1 was 109-97. The score of Mavericks-Celtics Game 1 was 107-89. But it goes deeper than that:

• The leader in field goals made for the Clippers? Not Paul George or James Harden, but Ivica Zubac (10 of 17). The leader in field goals made for the Celtics?
• Not Jayson Tatum or Jaylen Brown, but Kristaps Porzingis (8 of13).
• The Clippers made 46 percent from the field, including 18 of 36 3s.
• The Celtics made 47.6 percent from the field, with slightly less efficiency from 3 on similar volume (16 of 42).
• The Clippers had exactly 10 offensive rebounds and a 21:14 assist-turnover ratio.
• The Celtics had exactly 10 offensive rebounds and a 23:14 assist-turnover ratio.
• The Clippers had 36 paint points (albeit on a porous 18 of 45 rate), while the Celtics had 38 paint points (19 of 29 attempts).
• Luka Dončić had 33 points on 26 attempts against the Clippers, making 4 of 12 3s and compiling 4 turnovers.
• Against the Celtics, Doncic had 30 points on 26 attempts, making 4 of 12 3s and compiling 4 turnovers.
• Against the Clippers, the Mavericks were outscored by eight points in Daniel Gafford's 14:03 and 19 points in Dereck Lively II's 19:08.
• Against the Celtics, the Mavericks were outscored by 10 points in Gafford's 14:19 and 15 points in Lively's 18:29, with Lively making one field goal in each of those games.
• The Clippers led by as many as 29 points in Game 1. That was the largest lead of the game in Game 1 for the Celtics as well.
• Dallas wound up outscoring the Clippers and Celtics in each of the third and fourth quarters of the respective Game 1s as well.

There were significant differences, of course, such as Kyrie Irving failing to find any traction at Boston (Irving scored 31 points in Game 1 at LA). Doncic had six assists in Game 1 at LA, but only one assist at Boston.

The Celtics were fully healthy, while the Clippers would debut injured All-Star Kawhi Leonard in Game 2.

Both teams are going to look at Game 2 with a sense of optimism. For Dallas, it is a sign they have been there before against a team of similar composition; they wound up bringing a significantly elevated level of physicality to Game 2 to steal home court advantage from the Clippers in April.

But Boston will simply line up Sunday and show that they can do it again. After all, they're not the Clippers.

Kristaps Porziņģis on whether he is 100 percent healthy:

"Tonight was an affirmation to myself that I'm good. Maybe I'm not perfect, but I'm pretty good."

From the 6:29 mark of the second quarter until 4:58 remained in the fourth quarter (which was when Dallas took out its starters), the Mavericks were only outscored by three points.

It takes clever math manipulation like that to take anything positive from Dallas’ decisive 107-89 Game 1 defeat. The Boston Celtics clearly had far superior ideas and players — and then better execution atop that — in the first game played of the 2024 NBA Finals.

That's the main takeaway, of course. There's no sugarcoating what happened.

But if there’s any reason that 6:29-minute mark might matter, it's when Dallas substituted Maxi Kleber in at center. It was the team's choice to embrace pragmatism and excise any cute lineup decisions. It was when the team went to strategies that were built around the Celtics' strengths, not those that got Dallas here. Just to name an obvious one: it was about then that Dallas began switching virtually every screen at any cost.

These are the adjustments that the Mavericks will be studying between Games 1 and 2, and this is the stat that will likely give them optimism that they can figure out what's needed in this series that they didn't offer in Game 1.

Because Dallas has experience with this — it went down 0-1 in both the first and second rounds of this very postseason run — it's likely we'll see a much more competitive Dallas in Game 2. Whether that's enough to change the direction of this series, though, is harder to answer.

Dallas was outscored by 10 in Daniel Gafford's 14 minutes and 19 seconds, and by 15 in Dereck Lively II's 18:29

Lively picked up all five of his fouls in the third quarter, the only time either one of the centers looked effective at any point.

Kristaps Porziņģis came to Boston to play some basketball beyond the first round of the postseason. Naturally, it came against the franchise who brought him in to pair with Luka Dončić and then cast him aside. A calf strain forced him to wait all the way until the NBA Finals, but he made it clear he is ready for the moment.

From the moment he checked in, he dominated.

Dallas threw every defender they could at him in the post and he just shot over everyone. He rarely posts up centers, but still managed to blow by Dereck Lively II to throw it down. Then on defense, Porziņģis ate up everything at the rim. The Mavs kept trying to score in the paint when they couldn’t get 3s off, and Porziņģis managed to contest without fouling consistently.

Now the Mavs have to respond. Their gameplan in Game 2 could focus on keeping Porziņģis away from the paint and making him more of a pick-and-pop player. Or, Dallas can keep daring Porziņģis to hit shots and run hard off bricks, if there are any. Dallas wasn't able to pull him out into space defensively too often and wear him out that way, and Porziņģis was able to keep his minutes down in the low 20s. Dallas has to find a way to wear him down and test how fresh his recovered calf is if this is going to be a close series, because the Mavs hardly created any 3s or generated good enough ball movement to keep up with this Celtics offense.

Joe Mazzulla said Kristaps Porziņģis was great on both ends of the court.

“I thought he played great. That’s the KP that helped us get to where we are today.”

This NBA Finals series will test Jaylen Brown on both ends. He spent most of his time in Game 1 defending Luka Dončić while carrying a heavy offensive burden, as he usually does. He will need to make sharp decisions against a Dallas defense that has been as good as any since early March. The Celtics will need big games from Brown on both ends.

He gave them one in Game 1 with a mighty two-way performance. Brown racked up 21 points, five rebounds, three steals, three blocks and two assists. Beyond the powerful stat line, he delivered timely plays on both ends of the court.

After a nearly perfect first half, the Celtics gave up a 35-14 run spanning the second and third quarters. A Dončić 3-pointer with 4:28 left in the third quarter cut what was once a 29-point Boston lead to 72-64. The crowd went silent, clearly nervous.

Brown steadied the Celtics and then some. He stopped the Dallas run by earning a pair of free throws. He drew Dereck Lively II’s fifth foul to force the impressive rookie big man off the court. Brown denied the high-flying Derrick Jones Jr. at the rim twice on the same possession, then picked up another block moments later. To cap off a 14-0 Celtics run, which came directly after the Mavericks’ big spurt, Brown drilled a 3-pointer from the top of the key and celebrated by blowing a kiss to the crowd.

With Dončić as his primary matchup, Brown won’t get much rest in this series. But if he’s this good the rest of the way, he could soon be able to sleep well.

BOSTON – For most of the NBA’s regular season, there was little doubt as to who was the best, deepest team. The same could be said for much of pro basketball’s first Finals game in 2024.

Jaylen Brown led the Boston Celtics with 22 points, Kristaps Porziņģis made his triumphant return from a calf injury with 20 points, and the league’s No. 1 overall seed easily dispatched the Dallas Mavericks, 107-89, in Game 1 Thursday night.

Game 2 is at 8 p.m. Sunday at TD Garden.

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