“You want Boston?” asked the mock-incredulous hype video voiced by the part-owner of Birmingham City FC, who had a decent career dabbling in the other kind of football. “Take it from me,” warned Tom Brady. “That’s a bad idea.”
Hard to disagree after the first game of the best-of-seven NBA finals. The Boston Celtics crushed the Dallas Mavericks, 107-89, though at its core the occasion was a tale of the unwanted.
Booed by New York Knicks fans when the team drafted him as the fourth overall pick in 2015, Kristaps Porziņģis suffered a torn ACL in 2018 and was traded the following year to the Mavericks, where he was again dogged by injury and struggled in Luka Dončić’s shadow. Dispatched to the woeful Washington Wizards in 2022, the 7ft 2in Latvian was sent to the Celtics last year.
Schedule
Best-of-seven series. All times US eastern time (EDT).
Thu 6 Jun Game 1: Celtics 107, Mavericks 89
Sun 9 Jun Game 2: Celtics 105, Mavericks 98
Wed 12 Jun Game 3: Celtics 106, Mavericks 99
Fri 14 Jun Game 4: Mavericks 122, Celtics 84
Mon 17 Jun Game 5: Celtics 106, Mavericks 88
Misfortune struck again when he sustained a calf injury against the Miami Heat on 29 April, and Boston hardly seemed to notice the 28-year-old’s absence, losing only one of the next 10 games. He was conspicuous in his comeback at the TD Garden on Thursday, though, emerging off the bench to catalyze a first quarter that set the tone for much of the night.
Porziņģis scored 18 points in his first 13 minutes as lethal shooting from distance saw Boston rush to a 17-point lead after the first quarter, extending their advantage to 21 points at the half. In total Porziņģis contributed 20 points, second among the Celtics to Jaylen Brown, with 22. “Man, I’m glad he’s back,” said his teammate, Jayson Tatum, afterwards on ESPN/ABC.
“Fighting for a spot on the offensive end, being physical, making plays on both ends o the floor, I thought he played great,” said the Boston head coach, Joe Mazzulla.
“I was so into the moment, the crowd, even from the moment that I was walking out to warm up, I was getting goosebumps,” Porziņģis told ESPN. “Everything just clicked,” he said, adding that he is not yet back to full fitness. “A month and a half without playing, it’s tough to jump and have the same conditioning as if you were playing all these rounds and all these games. I’m still getting there.”
The Celtics ran the most efficient regular-season offense in league history, with 122.2 points per hundred possessions, and were the best team, with 64 wins. They have carried that form into the postseason and now have eight successive victories. There was a certain logic to their win on Thursday, an assertion of the natural order against a Dallas unit that had a humdrum 34-28 record as late as March. Boston shredded their cowed and confused opponents with an intensity bordering on zealotry.
A 29-point Boston lead was sliced to eight in the third quarter as Luka Dončić almost single-handedly sparked a comeback, but the Celtics quavered only fleetingly and Brown stepped up and stood tall at both ends of the court. “We’ve got to take those threes away, that’s what hurt us the most,” Dončić told reporters.
All in all, this was a stunning opening act worthy of the operatic scope of these NBA playoffs – operatic in that they are full of drama, very noisy and seem to take forever. The play-in tournament began on 16 April and the finals will finish at some point from 14-23 June, as NBA commissioner Adam Silver bravely attempts to do his bit for humanity and reverse our shrinking attention spans.
However, while fixed dates make logistical sense, and the healing Porziņģis was grateful for the break, the modern news cycle is rushed and evanescent. Dallas had not played for a week, while Boston’s previous game was on 27 May: so long ago that the likely next leader of the free world was not yet a convicted felon.
The effect of the wait on the television ratings will matter, perhaps more than ever: it was reported this week that the NBA is poised to agree a new broadcast rights deal worth as much as $76bn over 11 years, though Silver demurred in a pre-game press conference. “To a certain extent you’re trying to predict the future, which is of course impossible,” he said.
Even if some details are still to be negotiated, it seems safe to forecast that any future in which media companies agree to more than double their existing outlay is a future in which viewers can expect more brazen commercialism. As Awful Announcing noted, there were so many advertisements at half-time that the five-strong ESPN/ABC crew were afforded less than two minutes to analyze the action. Somewhere a TV executive is wondering if it is time to abandon in-game tactics interviews with players and coaches so that the stars can spend even more time shilling for junk food and insurance.
Nor are inconvenient political truths likely to receive much of an airing, even in America’s most progressive major league, now that Mark Cuban has sold a controlling stake in the Mavericks to a Trumpist billionaire.
The new owner, Miriam Adelson, a Las Vegas casino tycoon who reportedly gave over $218m to right-wing causes with her late husband in the 2020 cycle, is said to be the key backer for a pro-Donald Trump group aiming to raise over $100m this year. That’s enough to pay Dončić’s salary for more than two years, which would be a less contentious use of the money. The family behind The Venetian hope to place a new arena at the center of a Texan casino-resort; The Slovenian has a certain ring to it.
Certainly there is no bigger celebrity in Dallas right now, and perhaps no player more admired and feared in the entire NBA, than Dončić. The Ljubljana-born 25-year-old led the league during the regular season with an average of 33.9 points per game and entered the finals as the playoffs leader in total points, rebounds, assists and whingeing to officials. This raised his average to 28.7 points over six regular seasons, a career mark behind only Michael Jordan and Wilt Chamberlain (both 30.1).
Stop a player as rounded as Dončić? Mazzulla conceded in the build-up that damage limitation is the only feasible approach. Despite the result, and though he appeared to be struggling with a lingering knee injury, Dončić still scored a game-high 30 points in his finals debut. He was the first player to have a double-double with 30 or more points in his first finals game since Tim Duncan of the San Antonio Spurs in 1999.
“Our job is to limit the other guys as much as we possibly can,” said Tatum. Job done, since Dončić only mustered one assist, an indicator of systemic offensive dysfunction. Kyrie Irving, jeered by the Boston fans on his return to one of his former teams, scored only 12 points.
Two years after the Celtics lost to the Golden State Warriors over six games they are justifying their status as favorites against a franchise making its first appearance since the triumphant 2011 campaign, when their coach, Jason Kidd, was in the line-up. Dallas, though, rebounded after losing the first game against the Los Angeles Clippers and the Oklahoma City Thunder earlier in the postseason.
“These guys will not go away,” Porziņģis told ESPN. “They’re going to keep throwing punches and coming for us and we’re going to come for them, same way we did tonight.”
