Dallas Dominates Game 4, Luka's Effort on Defense, and the Mavs' Minuscule Chances
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And now, The Low Post. Welcome to The Low Post podcast. Game four of the NBA Finals is still going on. Boston waved the white flag long ago. The Dallas Mavericks, who I believe, depending on what the final score of this game ends up being, will have outscored the Boston Celtics through the first four games of the series, live to fight another day.

And try to become the first team ever. Some team's going to do it. It's probably not going to be the Mavericks. It's probably not going to be a team that has to win five and seven potentially on the road. But they'll give it a fighting chance. And they fought tonight. Kevin Pelton, how are you?

I'm good. I'm surprised. I mean, I thought Dallas, there was a pretty good chance they were going to win this series, especially because everyone was doing the inevitable planning that you have to do in case a team wins the finals, including what we were going to talk about on this podcast. So it just kind of seemed inevitable to me that Dallas was going to scuttle all that by winning this game and at least getting one in this series. But I'm

I did not imagine we were going to be looking up the largest margin in NBA Finals history. And on the precipice of that, that's the drama over the last couple of minutes here as we started recording. Well, it was by far the Mavericks' best defensive performance of the series. Not even close. I actually think, Kevin Pelton, I think our colleague, Brian Winhorst, who I will be podcasting with from the floor of TD Garden, win or lose for the Celtics on Monday after Game 5,

I think he might have impacted the series because his, it wasn't even a rant. It was a scolding of petulant, fouled out, blown by, and yes, injured Luka Doncic. He's playing through some Knicks and Knacks. And Brian Windhorst scolded him for all of the above. And Luka Doncic came out tonight, presumably still dealing with the same Knicks and Knacks, and defended his ass off. Lo and behold,

When he's dialed in, maybe something in his body changed over the last 48 hours when he's dialed in. He can keep Jason Tatum in front of him. He did that. He can keep Jalen Brown in front of him. He did that. He can keep Drew Holiday in front of him and poke the ball away from him or force a turnover three separate times in the game.

Dallas' entire defensive ecosystem was a lot cleaner. The help was a lot better. The recoveries were a lot earlier in sync with the ball. I'll highlight a couple of those later.

I thought Kleba looked by far his spriest that he has looked in the series. And when the Mavericks had Exum, Kleba, and a center on the floor in the first half, and Exum did enough offensively despite getting a three wiped away on a fantastic slipped screen and pass from Derek Lively. And I say slipped screen very purposely. The Mavericks came out, Lively came out and said, I can beat some of these switches if I slip really hard and make a play. When they had those three guys on the floor,

It felt like, okay, there's a defensive coherence here around Kyrie and Luka. Same with Josh Green in Exum's place. I thought they were outstanding defensively. And really, I think in the last two games in Dallas, outside of the third quarter, which was a masterpiece from Boston, third quarter of a game three when they outscored Dallas 35-19,

I think Boston's offense has looked a little bit uncertain against this sort of hybrid man zone that Dallas is playing, moving the pieces around, switching sort of the degree to which they're playing zone and man on any given possession, making sure Gafford and Lively stay low. Boston has looked, and tonight definitely looked, a little uncertain for pockets of the game. And the last thing I'll say is I checked cleaning the glass right when garbage time started, right when Joe Mazzulla waved the white flag yesterday.

It was 88-52. At that point in the game, Boston was 9-27 on threes. Dallas was 7-21, so it was close. I know you're going to get into that later. Luka and Kyrie just absolutely killed it in the paint in every possible way. Killed it. Just tremendous games for both of them. They had 50 points combined on 22-44 shooting. Tatum and Brown had 25 points combined, so they got doubled up on 7-22 shooting. Boston had two offensive rebounds.

The Mavs had 11. Lively was absolutely enormous. The Mavs won the turnover battle and very pointedly defense to offense, stops to offense. For the first time in the series, they won the transition battle decisively. In fact, a

According to cleaning the glasses measurement of transition points, the Celtics in the competitive portion of the game had zero transition points. Zero. None. Not just fast break points. Transition points. A complete demolition by the Dallas Mavericks fighting for their season. And we'll have 72 hours to see and learn, Kevin, if this was...

a harbinger of something of Dallas, maybe making this a series and maybe getting it back to Dallas. And all of a sudden you start to sweat a bit. Or if this was a team, the case of a team up three, Oh,

taking its foot off the gas a little bit, knowing we've got home games in the bag. We're going back to Boston for game five, worst case scenario. They get hit early and they never quite respond. I would tend to think Boston is going to win game five. I picked Boston in six to win the series.

I didn't think they'd go up 3-0, but this game at least makes me think they're going to have a war on their hands in Game 5. They're going to have a battle on their hands in Game 5. What are your main takeaways from tonight, which is still going on?

Has it gone final is yet now it has. And the math on the fly, the Celtics managed to cut it down to a 38 point final margin. It appears. So they did avoid the worst loss in finals history that remains 96, 54 in the 1998 NBA finals. I remember it well. Just an incredible score. Yeah.

I Al Horford, I think, referred to it as desperation that Dallas was playing with. And it's interesting because it did seem like, you know, based on the Mavericks comments between game three and game four, like maybe this is a team that's let go of the rope a little bit and understands that this task is just too enormous that they don't feel like, you know, they can beat the Celtics this.

one time let alone four times in a row but then by the whatever jason kidd said whatever was done in that locker room by the time they got out there tonight they were flying around at both ends of the court it was the defensive intensity we saw in the fourth quarter run that they had against boston to to make up the 20 point and point deficit maintained over the entire competitive portion of the game and luca as you mentioned at the forefront of it and what's interesting is it's

This should have been the most difficult game for Luka because this is the only game in the finals, this Wednesday, Friday, game three, game four, that's played with only one day rest. Teams do have to travel now between every single game the remainder of the series because we're no longer in the 2-3-2 format. But you would think that would be the hardest turnaround. And lo and behold, he came out looking like everything we wanted Luka to be. I mean,

You know, Wendy was obviously not the only person who took Luke at a task after game three. I think some of it was a little unfair to the degree that he's carrying this extreme offensive load because of the fact that the rule players and Kyrie in the first two games series were struggling offensively. Also, they're in the finals primarily because of him. They're a fifth seed in the finals and in the conference finals and beyond for the second time in three years, primarily because of him.

I highlighted this the last time I was on it. There's the Peter principle of the NBA playoffs where you just aggressively go up against tougher opponents, generally speaking, so that eventually your weaknesses start getting exposed. And sometimes people overreact to that is in 2022 when the Celtics lost to the Warriors and that was an indication that they can't win a championship or that you need to break up Jalen Brown and Jason Tatum and all those things. And we've subsequently learned that lesson. So hopefully we remember that lesson when it comes to Luka. But

The flip side of it was Luka can and certainly put forth a lot better effort defensively than we've seen in this series, even playing hurt. We've seen it at times over the course of the playoffs. We saw it at times in 2022 and it makes Dallas just so much more difficult to attack. So I guess that's where I'd start with is you did is what Luka's defensive effort meant to their shell and not getting beaten repeatedly off the dribble or off backdoor cuts.

You know, the thing that was very, not funny, and Windhorse wasn't really a big part of this, but the piling on was, like, Luka's been whining to the refs for so long, so dramatically, that, yeah, there were a couple bad instances of it in Game 3 when he fell over and they gave up transition points as a result twice in the first quarter. But, like, it's been so long that it's been three years now.

Since I called on this podcast, Luka Doncic, the biggest whiner in the NBA, and Mark Cuban, in a response 48 hours later, went on TV and said, and I quote, Zach Lowe, you don't know what you're talking about, and blew my life up for 72 hours. That's how long it's been. And his defensive effort, look, I think tonight, whatever happened is proof that

You just can't be a sinkhole in these games on this stage. And you can't be a sinkhole because you've shown us that you can be better than that when the chips are on the line, when you're really dialed in. And tonight they had no other choice. He was good. Kyrie was awesome. And I think, you know, Bill Simmons was talking about this, and I think it proved to be correct after game three on his podcast that

about the run the Mavs made to get back into that game. And he talked about how they just said, we're just going to play as physically as possible and dare the refs to call fouls on us. And I thought that continued tonight when you saw Kyrie on Tatum and there was a stretch in the game where Kyrie was like on Tatum on purpose. That was the matchup. He was just up into his body, bumping him, hitting him with his hands. Just like, you're not getting by me without me almost knocking you over. And for the most part, the refs let them play physically.

And that physicality really played into the Mavericks' hands, I thought. Yeah, and I think the other element with Kyrie and Luka is, can we get them some rest? And that was the undiscussed part after Game 3 is that...

And yes, Luka was struggling when he was on the court defensively, but the Mavericks were getting destroyed every time he was on the bench. And that's something they were able to do tonight. They take him out late in the third quarter, in the first quarter, go on an 8-3 run. They were able to succeed with just one of those guys on the court. The Boston bench was notably less effective. And then you mentioned this, the Dallas bench and...

It felt like Jason could kind of clarify the rotation tonight. These are the nine guys we want out there. The answer to the Jaden Hardy or Tim Hardaway Jr. question turned out to be no, although Tim Hardaway Jr. made some shots in the late stages of this game when he finally got an opportunity to get in. And that, I think, really tightened things up considerably for Dallas as well, kind of knowing that it was going with those guys and it was going with the defensive line.

options in all of those cases with eggs giving them, as you mentioned, just enough offense to kind of keep that group viable.

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Sometimes what happens on these immediate, flush-in-the-moment postgame podcasts is you forget to mention a really important thing until 12 minutes in. Kristaps Porzingis didn't play. He was declared available only in specific situations by Joe Mazzulla, whatever that means, continuing Joe Mazzulla's streak of X days in a row with a mysterious and or unusual comment. He didn't play, and...

This was the first series in which I really thought they're going to need Porzingis to win the series. I didn't think they needed him at all. I said it in the Miami series. I don't think they need him to win the East, and they didn't. They have been fine without him in the series until tonight, and you really felt it. And in the third quarter...

Dallas came out in a traditional man-to-man defense. They just put Gafford on Horford and played like drop defense in the pick and roll. And the Celtics went to like, oh, we have a normal defense. I'm playing his own. Let's just go run some pick and pop and I'll hit a three. But it wasn't enough to like really compromise that defense. And those are the kind of those that's the scheme. The team, the Mavs have been unwilling to play with Porzingis in the game. That's why they were switching early in game one. And he went to work in the post and,

And you just, you know, you felt his absence. And Derek Lively looked like a giant on the offensive glass all of a sudden. Part of that is because they're still putting Tatum on Lively and Gafford, which is what they should do. That's smart strategy. But this was the first game really where Lively and or Gafford were able to assert their size like that for like the entire game.

Absolutely. I mean, this was easily their best game in the series. Derek Lively making the first three of his NBA career in the first quarter. It's part of a stretch where it was three block on the other end, dunk, dunk.

uh, five points in two possessions. And then Gafford had a pretty good stretch like that coming out of the break. They gave him a post-up, uh, post-up touch on the first two possessions, I think of the third quarter. And then he played some really inspired basketball after that. I'm usually not a fan of the whole like token post-up. So the center will play hard sort of thing, but Gafford against Tatum, it's like a viable strategy to post him up. And all of a sudden he's out there blocking a three on the perimeter in his own right.

And drawing Tatum's not drawing, but Tatum committed his fourth foul on, on that blocked three pointer and kind of the tack. He kind of knocked him down. No, but not tackled is not what he did, but that's what it looked like. Gafford fell down fourth foul. That lively three was, was interesting schematically, uh,

And in the same vein, and I think more important in terms of its potential impact on the series, the three that Kliba hit at the end of the first half was the same general concept. And the general concept is this –

Horford is guarding the opposing, we'll call it, well, just for simplicity's sake, the opposing power forward. So on the lively three, it was Derek Jones Jr. On the Kleba three, it was Kleba. And Luka is calling those guys up to screen for him to attack Horford. Like this is the slowest guy. This is the only guy that I can feel somewhat comfortable against, even though Horford has been great in the series.

Well, that means Lively's got to be somewhere, and he's usually parked along the baseline, just kind of taking up space. So on the Lively three, they run the Luka, Derrick Jones pick and roll, the Celtics switch. Tillman might have been in the game at that point, is on Luka. Derrick Jones rolls to the rim. Luka drives. You know, he can get by Xavier Tillman.

And because Derrick Jones Jr. is rolling to the rim, he's in the paint. His defender's in the paint kind of looming to cut off Luka and say, look, you're not getting to the rim. You're going to have to shoot a 12-footer. You're very capable of making it. That's the only shot we're giving you. And Lively kind of moonwalks over to the corner and says, I'm not just going to chill on the baseline and be in the way. I'm going to get over here. And Luka passes him the ball and he makes a three. The Kliba one before the half, more interesting. It's Luka, Kliba in the pick and roll. Same switch, Horford onto Luka, Kliba.

Kleba rolls. Kleba's defender, Drew Holiday, now is in the way of Luka. Luka's got to pull up. But Kleba and Dallas started doing this more in Game 3, and they did it a lot tonight. Kleba doesn't just roll. He rolls and he clears to the sideline to get out of the way and remain an active threat in the offense. And he curls around a lively screen into the corner, and Luka finds him for a 3-0.

That's not an accident. That's strategy. It's strategy against Boston switch defense. And Dallas is like slowly learning things and getting comfortable on offense in this series. You saw in the second quarter, actually started in the first quarter, Horford started to drop a little bit on the pick and roll, kind of a high drop, like not a switch. I'm going to corral you and retreat with you, retreat with the big man. There was a, there was one possession where he switched and they sent a double team and

There was one Kyrie pick and roll where Hauser blitzed him and they got a Luka catch and shoot opportunity out of it. Like you saw Boston started to get...

a little out of character as strong, but different things started to pop up and Dallas was forcing that out of them. And here I thought it was the Raptors who tested the fences and we're learning from it, not the Mavericks. It all gets to a way to generate three pointers as well for Dallas. So that was the stat you highlighted after game three is the shocking disparity in catch and shoot threes. You want to reiterate that for everyone through the first three games of the series? Yeah. Coming into the series, um,

Catch and shoot three. This is literally the whole series in one stat. Catch and shoot three is Boston 33 of 87. Dallas 9 of 38. 9 to 33. That's the whole series. And the attempt gap is the even more important stat. I believe the Celtics had more catch and shoot threes than Dallas had threes, period, of all kinds through the first three games of the series. And I don't have the stats from tonight, but you do. So you take it away.

Yeah, thanks to ESPN Stats and Info. And I don't know if this is specifically cut off right when sort of both teams emptied their benches, but it's pretty close to that. Dallas was 9 of 14 on catch-and-shoot threes tonight. Boston, 4 of 20. Now, those percentages are going to even out a little bit. I think the make-or-miss element did...

exaggerate the margin in Dallas's favor tonight. But, you know, the gap is no longer two and a half times as many attempts for Boston than Dallas. And that's what the Mavericks can't live with. And probably a better quality of attempt. The other fascinating thing, I didn't realize this until I was going through the box score, as you were mentioning this, is

Kyrie and Luca shot a combined one of 14 on threes tonight. All their damage was done in the paint. It was everybody else. Mavericks not named Luca and Kyrie were 14 of 23 on threes tonight. Now, a large chunk of that, I mentioned Tim Hardaway Jr. making...

a couple or one in, in the late stations. He actually went five of seven in the fourth quarter from three point range, which could be handy if the Mavericks need to see what happens. See what, see what happens when Tim Hardaway jr. Gets to play without Luca. All of a sudden he cooks. Just ask Tim Hardaway senior who pops off about this on radio shows like once every two months. Um,

Well, I mean, and that does not include the Exum three that got wiped away off that pass from Lively because he was out of bounds. On the Max Struis rule, the Celtics benefit again. That's right. Oh, my God. Max Struis, the right. P.J. Washington, two, three. Derek Jones made it one, three. It felt big.

Exum was just gigantic and just, yeah, one of 14 for the Stars. I mean, I knew they had cooked in the paint. Kyrie went at Tatum a couple times in the third quarter and beat him. One was a tough floater. One was a blow-by. They were relentless tonight, the two of them. And, you know, they can be that in every game. The defense is the question. Can you be that in every game? Can you be that in Boston? Yeah.

Yeah. And I've been tracking kind of the shot quality throughout this series. Boston pretty comfortably dominated in game one. It was quite close in game two and game three, although Boston had a bit of an edge in those games, particularly game two going into the fourth quarter. And it was really when their offense shut down in the prevent offense that Dallas was able to make up that difference. I haven't seen those numbers yet tonight, but it certainly felt like Dallas's shot quality was way better for the first time in this series. And I think

But that Kyrie and Lucas stat and their success in the paint shows is one of the most annoying regressive anti-analytics trope is this idea that there's some battle between threes and layups and that analytics types don't want teams shooting layups. They want threes instead, which did happen in this game where I think it was Derek White.

Someone passed out of a potential layup opportunity for a three because they felt some footsteps behind them. I think it might have been White with Lively trailing him on the play.

No one is endorsing that. The key, the secret is the threes are what lead to the shots in the paint because they open things up. And what you're trading away is not, you know, there are not fewer attempts at the rim now because teams shoot so many more threes. There are as many attempts at the rim as ever. What's happened is that a bunch of 18 foot jump shots became 24 foot jump shots. And we list those on a separate category in the box score. So it's easier to notice them.

I feel like that was a segment from a podcast during the Warriors' first championship run in 2015 that nine years later got plopped into this. Ironically, a team that...

When you ask around, as I did in the last week, about if Boston were to win this series in convincing fashion, which is 4-1 would be convincing, but tonight is definitely a dent in the armor. What kind of team would come up for them historically as a comp? And that Warriors team gets brought up quite a bit, sort of a tier below the very, very, very, very, very, very, very best teams of all time. Including their own team once they added Kevin Durant. Yeah.

Well, that is – the 2017 Warriors by the numbers are at or near the top of the greatest teams since the merger list no matter how you slice it, right? With the 96 Bulls, the 97 Bulls, and a couple other teams that just pass every blow away, every statistical test, regular season dominance and wins and point differential playoff dominance and wins or I should say really few losses and point differential. But –

That now becomes a story for another day because the Celtics are not the champions. And look, after again, these immediate reaction podcasts are interesting because you never know where your brain is going to go. And after game three,

I said something like the headline is going to be Luka fouling out. What I meant by that was not like that's my personal headline. It was this is going to be the talking point on every show. And then I kind of hammered Boston for their meltdown on offense. And I listened to it again. I gave them a ton of credit for the huge bench minutes they got, for the late plays they made, Tatum's dunk, Jalen Brown's jump shot, Jalen Brown's putback, all of that.

But that eight minutes was bothersome to me. They scored two points in eight minutes. And I just didn't think their offense got any rhythm at all tonight. Part of that is because they didn't get any transition opportunities. They just looked kind of a little hazy and out of sync offensively tonight. That happens. They were the number one offense in the NBA. This is a great offense. It's been a great crunch time offense. No one is denying any of that.

Just the last two games have been a weird up and down experience. You had this like 18 minute period or 20 minute period in the middle of game three that was brilliant and exactly what you want this team to be. And then the beginning and the end of the game, they kind of didn't feel like they knew how they wanted to attack this weird defense where Dallas is disguising what they're doing and disguising what the scheme is.

What did you see from Boston's offense tonight? Either what struck you as problematic or did you see any glimmers of like, okay, that's a thing that they should be doing more against this defense that they can maybe carry over as they go home?

I felt like there were a lot of situations where players were doing things that are kind of out of character for them or a little bit uncomfortable. Like Sam Houser making a pull-up jumper off a drive stands out. How often has Sam Houser done that all season? And he knocked it down. But it's the kind of moments like that. And it was a lot of Tatum driving into a crowd. I think Dallas...

Despite the fact that they were able to cut off threes was still making it a focus to take away the pain after, as you've mentioned with that kind of hybrid zone on the interior after just getting decimated in game two with drive after drive, even if those weren't necessarily leading to layups, they were leading to kickouts and those catch and shoot threes that we just talked about. So I...

I thought Tatum was seeing a lot of bodies without obvious passing lanes, and that was leading guys in an uncomfortable position. And the other thing in game three that struck me in that third quarter and then maybe contrasted with the eight-minute stretch in the fourth quarter where their offense went quiet was good things were happening any time Drew Holiday and Derek White were involved offensively, and that kind of dried up tonight, whether it was just Luka's greater defensive intentiveness or what have you.

Totally agree. And I think the transition was a big part of it. And I just, the bulk of the credit goes to Dallas. Their defense was on another level tonight. And if you want, I wrote down one possession that I thought, like, if you want one 25 second sequence that sums up the game. Now the game was already at, not out of hand, but getting there. About 10 minutes and 45 seconds left in the third quarter.

Boston starts the possession with a Tatum Horford pick and roll. Hey, good. That's good. That's a good idea. Right at the top of the arc, right in the middle of the floor. They get the Gafford switch. That's what they want. That's good. Good start flows right into a Tatum drew holiday pick and roll. They get to Lucas switch.

Good start. But they don't... No, I take that back. This is the point. They don't get the Luka switch. Drew Holiday slips the pick anticipating that Dallas is going to switch. Slips the pick hard. Tatum gets him the ball in the lane. Luka doesn't switch. He keeps on fighting. He fights to stay attached to Holiday. He's behind, but he stays within striking distance.

P.J. Washington stunts off of somebody in the corner. I can't remember who it is. It might have been Jalen Brown. It was Jalen Brown in the left corner. Stunts off of him.

to cut off Drew Holiday and then Drew Holiday passes to Jalen Brown in the corner and as the pass is like leaving his fingertips P.J. Washington is already on the way back to Jalen Brown meets him on the catch and Jalen Brown is left with only this really tough like burrowing isolation against P.J. Washington misses a floater Luka grabs the rebound goes

three-quarter court lob alley-oop to Gafford for a dunk or 40-foot alley-oop to Gafford for a dunk. That's Maverick's defense. Maverick's not just giving the switch. Maverick's going help inside, rotate back outside on a frenzy. Like J.J. Redick said it on the Pot potential future coach of the Los Angeles Lakers. J.J. Redick said it on the broadcast in the first half that it wasn't just Maverick

their point of attack defense it was the help and the closeouts it was a frenzy it was the kind of good frenzy you see when a team has its back to the wall and that's the competitiveness that they're going to need to show like every possession that's what this demands to get if you not not to win the series just to get it back to Dallas with a chance to put all the pressure in the world at home on Boston

Yeah. I mean, effort covers a lot of sins defensively, but then that also has to be accompanied with the, you know, kind of being on a string, anticipating what each other are doing and for Dallas to be able to execute at that level, given that, you know, a lot of the time, two of the five guys on the court have only been there, you know, now it's four months because the, they've been playing for two full months in the playoffs here, but it's still really remarkable when you compare that to the amount of time it's taken other teams that have added pieces mid season to, to gel and coalesce. I,

I thought the most outstanding defensive possession for them, this wasn't technically a 24 seconds of great defense because there was a foul in there, but the shot clock violation with 347 left in the first half where Al Horford couldn't quite get the shot off in time. And you sort of compare that to the, it was what an eight pass sequence that Boston had in the third quarter of game three. That was kind of almost Spurs gas in me in terms of their ability to move

the ball. That's a throwback. That's a throwback. I like that. Well, you know, that was, that was a series we've thought about, I think a little bit at times during this one, uh, the way that San Antonio dominated that one, a series where they, they won in five. Uh, I, and you know, that same kind of ball movement, testing the Dallas defense and this one and the Mavericks defense responding entirely. Um, a stat from that game, by the way, game three that I'll just, I'll just dump it here. It will live somewhere. Um,

In the third quarter of that game in particular, but across the game, but particularly in the third quarter, there were a bunch of the A-plus Boston possessions in that game where Tatum and Brown assisted each other's baskets, where one passed to the other and that player scored. I think Brown had four assists to Tatum in that game and Tatum had three assists to Brown.

And I emailed our stats group and I said, you know, that feels like a lot. Like these guys average like eight, eight and a half assists combined overall between them in a typical season, maybe nine, whatever it is.

Can you just check, like, where does seven combined assists just to each other rank in their careers together? Maybe it's high, maybe it's unusual, I don't know. Not only is it high, it's tied for the most assists they've had to each other ever in any game, playoffs or regular season, in their entire career together.

They've done it two other times, both in the regular season. And it was a season high for this season. And they just weren't... And there was one where Tatum drove by Luka and bounced it to Jalen Brown for a dunk where it had these vague echoes of, this is how long I've been doing this. Remember in the 2012 playoffs...

heat pacers bosh is out in game four and maybe it was game two bosh is out in game two and wade and lebron have this series of like interior passes to each other and dunks where it's like oh my god they're figuring out like these two ball dominant wings are figuring out how to play off of each other had little echoes of that yeah you do remember that you would maybe working for the pacers at the

Yeah, I was consulting for the Panthers at the time. I remember how excited everybody was. People were starting to write off the heat down 2-1, coming off their loss to Dallas the last year in the finals. And then they unleashed that performance in game four with maybe Dexter Pittman as the starting center. Oh my God.

I don't know how to round things by mentioning Dexter Pittman, but it was like, that was a very valuable lesson. And hey, don't write off the team that has LeBron James and Dwayne Wade in their prime on it, even if Chris Bosh is hurt. I mentioned Drew Holiday slipping that screen.

I think if you're talking about things to bottle for the Celtics, I think that's the kind of action. And Joe Mazzulla mentioned this in the huddle. There was another one where he slipped a screen, got in the lane wide open, got the ball, had Horford one pass away, wide open in the corner, the right corner with 10, 11 on the shot clock. Didn't make it barfed up. I'm going to call it barfed up a terrible floater that went like glass back of the rim and off. It was like a bonk made a bonk noise.

I would bottle that like and they just got to figure out how to punish this zone where lively and Gafford are just roaming along the baseline not really guarding anybody Hauser hit like a in game three hit like a cut from corner to corner and kind of snuck behind the defense for a three he had another corner three tonight and

They're going to have to find a way to use those corners and get stuff out of there. Maybe set some flare screens off the ball. Just like get it, get it moving a little bit. And there was another one where Tatum got Luca on him, gave the ball up and they gave it right back to him. So he could attack like with a head of steam. Horford set like a fake screen, ran across the paint. Like the defense was confused. Everything was moving, swing, swing. Derek White missed a three.

There's some stuff in there that I think they're going to have to break out because other than that third quarter stretch, they've just kind of looked a little uncertain against this defense. And tonight just looked very, very uncertain. And again, I think the credit has to go to Dallas. They're scheming in interesting ways. And tonight they just competed at a different level. Yeah, I mean, to your point about the combined Brown and Tatum assists,

seven to each other in game three, five total to everyone in this game. And obviously their nights were curtailed because they were out of there pretty early with the margin of it, but telling that there just wasn't that same kind of shock reaction. So I guess the other question is we sort of project forward to this is if they get some version of Kristaps Porzingis back for game five, how much does that unlock things offensively? Because as you talked about,

on the last pod, the floor was just completely different with him out there in game one in particular, the way that Dallas was forced to react to him at both ends. And if you go back to the stretches where the Boston offense is bogged down in the fourth quarters of game two and game three, look, that's the exact situation they acquired Kristaps Forzingis for, was to have another option there when

when, when defenses start switching everything, that it's not just Tatum and Brown ISOs, that they can throw it to Porzingis in the post and have the ability to generate a high percentage look with him. And he wasn't able to be out there for the real stretch minutes of game two, because he, he, that injury first cropped up, obviously wasn't out there at all in game three. And if they have him, I mean, they probably can't have him for the

for the stretch. I don't think it's probably realistic of a game five, but even if it's just, you know, 12 minutes to that, you know, Xavier Tillman senior is playing right now to give Al Horford a rest. That still does open up some different things. Yeah. You know, I haven't, I'll go back and read the post game comments after we get done here. Our goal here is to get this up as quick as possible for people after the game and just sort of give the unvarnished reaction. Um,

Didn't play game three, used in whatever Mazula's wording was. He's available only in specific circumstances. None of that makes me particularly optimistic that he's going to be able to play and be impactful, but they do have two days off now.

um you know we'll see he got it but there were clips of him warming up he got a he had a good warm-up in and maybe that's encouraging and he just there's just a different pop to their team when he's on the floor a different level of spacing even than al provides at the five al man there's a lot of there's a lot of people around the league rooting for al um a lot of former hawks people i heard from billy donovan today billy donovan's abroad right now um

He texted me something about Al and obviously they did not, they didn't get it done tonight by any stretch, but he's an interesting dude. I think he's a five-time all-star. I got to look it up. He wins just everywhere other than Philly and the Philly Philly fans do not share in the Al Horford. It's not, it's not Al Horford's fault that Philly paid him all the money. Um,

He'll have an interesting, there'll be interesting Hall of Fame debates about Al Horford when it comes up, especially if they get this title and he kind of rounds out his career. There's just, I don't know how we got onto this, but there's a lot of, Kyle Korver and I had some texts about it the other day. There's a lot of people rooting for Al around, just universally beloved. It would have been interesting. I don't know if there's a Venn diagram of Al Horford, Mike Conley teammates, you know, see who they would have rooted for.

Two are both sort of in that same elder statesman role where everyone wants them to get the long anticipated ring out of the same draft class. Dan is messaging. He only made one third team all NBA in his career, which is for the Hall of Fame pretty low. But you do then have to factor in this is not just the NBA Hall of Fame. This is the Florida. This is college, too. He's on an all-time great repeat champion in Florida. And I've heard through intermediaries that

Among the Florida people, Joe Kimno and Corey Brewer are watching this series very, very closely as well. And winning, you know, has generally followed him everywhere he's been. And it's probably not a coincidence that Atlanta, you know, had that great run, the number one seed in 2014 with that really balanced team. You know, it's amazing. One of the things I was thinking about was kind of the...

Wendy had a rant when he first signed with Boston that first season about whether he was a Max player back on the old incarnation of the Hoop Collective podcast. And the circuitous route that led him back to the Celtics is this pivotal player making the least money of anybody other than Sam Hauser in their rotation, where he's

He's been invaluable in this postseason with Porzingis out. I mean, since we brought up that Bosh injury, I was looking at it the other day. Guys who have been injured, like teams that have won the championship with a player who's been injured. Bosh, I think, missed nine games in that 2012 playoff run, which is when they leaned into when he came back playing him at center.

Porzingis is blown by that. I don't think there's anything in recent memory where a guy has been injured in the playoffs and missed as long and his team has still won the title as Porzingis if Boston goes on to win it and Horford would be what made that all possible.

Yeah, you know, I said this after game three, like, yeah, Boston's slate of opponents in the East was was I mean, you're you're the database guide. You can dig this out and measure it analytically, not right now, but generally in ways that I can't in wrap in in a in a fast way.

I would assume that historically this was a fairly easy slate of opponents for Boston, given all the guys who missed games and given the teams in Philly and Milwaukee that just never got in position to play Boston for whatever, also due to injuries in both those cases. And there's nothing the Celtics can do about that. And they just destroyed all of those teams in quick succession.

which is what they're supposed to do. They blew them out. They came into tonight with like a plus 10.5 or something scoring margin that will take a hit after tonight. But you can't just put it into the ninth paragraph that this –

huge trade acquisition they made who unlocked the best version of their team. I mean, Boston has really cracked the code on how to play five out basketball. I think the other, a lot of other teams have tried it. This is not like an original idea by Boston, but in the way they're able to get in the paint and switch on defense and play inside out, they've kind of cracked the code on how to do that. Like a lot of five out teams, people discovered, like,

Oh, we can just switch against these guys and just sort of keep everything in front of us to some degree. Like you just, we go small, you go small, we go small, we all switch, nothing all that much happens. And Jeff Van Gundy has talked about this. You need a rim runner. You need some way to pressure the rim. Boston has sort of figured out

version of how to do this. And Porzingis was a big part of that. And you can't just put it in the 10th paragraph like, oh yeah, he missed all but six or whatever it ends up being of their games in route to the championship. It's a big, I mean, this is a guy people talked about as does he have an all-star case this year along with Derek White? You know, is he, that was, if you're being talked about like that, you're a top 30, 35 player in the NBA. Yeah. And I think Oklahoma city is the interesting contrast in terms of that five out style where you're

The biggest issue I think was less about Dallas' ability to switch and more that ultimately they didn't find Chet Holmgren that threatening as a spot-up three-point shooter at this stage of his career, and they were willing to put their...

I haven't been with Porzingis when he's been healthy. Also, you don't count as five out. I don't care where you're standing. You don't count as five out if for whether it's 20 minutes, 12 minutes, 22 minutes, you're playing a guy that they're not guarding. And that's Giddy. Like if that's just Giddy can be out, standing out. It's not five out if the other team is like, cool, you're Tony Allen dust. We don't care. Apologies to Tony Allen.

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Well, I mean, what other takeaways you got from this game? What else as we look ahead to...

You know, game five that if Boston loses that game at home, it starts to get a little sweaty around the old collar. Definitely. I mean, the biggest reason that 3-1 is so much harder to come back to pull off for the lower seed than the higher seed is because you have to win twice on the road, likely as the underdog in both of those games. You know, you would certainly presume that given you're the lower seed and you're down 3-1 in the series. Yeah.

I do think Dallas is, you know, especially with Porzingis out, probably deserves to be favored in home games, but probably not in games in Boston. So I went and looked up some stats because one thing I was curious about is our teams that go down three, nothing win game four to avoid the sweep. Are there chances of winning game five worse than,

And the answer is not historically. They've won 21% of the time in the 38 situations that's happened since 1984. If you look at the other 3-1 series, it's 21% of the time. The difference comes, it's turned out, in a very small sample size in game six. The teams that won game four to avoid the sweep

have gone just two and six, even when they've gotten it back home for game six. The other teams have gone seven and 12. And that group includes the two teams that have come back from three one without home court advantage. I believe it's the 95 Rockets and and then obviously the 2016 finals, the Cavs over the Warriors are the other example of that.

Did the Rockets not do it against the Clippers? Oh, they had home court. Yeah. They had home court. Yeah. So people forget about that as a distinction in the 3-1. Like everyone makes such a big deal about the 3-1 and it's very hard. But if you're the higher seed and you're down 3-1, I also look this up, historically 5-52. So you win 9% of the time. The lowest seed down 3-1, which this series is, 227, 1.5% of the time.

Well, it's not nothing. And they have Luka and they have Kyrie. Yeah, I mean, you've talked about the 3-0 is eventually going to happen. I wrote about it a few years ago. And right around the time I wrote about it, I think was Nick Nurse had the quote, like, if you win game four, it's 3-1 and 3-1 has been done. The other thing I looked at, it didn't matter that there was this large a margin of victory in game four going down 3-0.

And the answer is we don't really know because no team down three, nothing has ever won a game by anything approaching this. The biggest win was believe it or not in the 2017 finals when the cows were down three, nothing and avoided the sweep. They won by 21 and then golden state closed that series out back at home in game five.

Overall, the teams that won by 15 plus are like a little more competitive in game five. They're two and four, but it's a, it's a tiny sample. Well, that, that win was important, not just because it forced all of us to remain on the road for longer, but it prevented the Warriors from going undefeated in the playoffs, which is by definition, an unbreakable record. They ended up going 16 and one instead of 16 and oh, um,

Uh, that's, you know, the Nick Nurse quotes an interesting one. I think that's from the series where Philly went up 3-0 against Toronto and got it to six and then got it to six in Toronto and got blown out at home in game six. And I was ready to drop everything in my life to make sure I was at game seven in Philly if it happened. It would have been an all-timer and also very amusing now that Nick Nurse is on the other side of that, that particular matchup.

Something else I would bottle if I were Boston, I was just going through my notes before we wrap. Late in the game, the game's totally decided, about four minutes left. They ran an empty side pick and roll between Jalen and Drew to hunt Luka. And just, I like starting from the side like that, without another player there as a helper, as a help defender. Get the ball moving side to side. I thought that worked. They've got to

Boston's offense has been just okay in this series. Part of that is because they're missing threes. Both teams have been missing threes. But this has been a defense series for both teams. Tonight it was an everything series for the Mavs. Just awesome performance. You said something in that historical context.

in a historical thing that was interesting. And now in that historical deep dive, you just didn't five seconds somehow. Um, that was interesting to me. And now I can't remember what it was, but we've got time to think about it because game five in Boston on Monday, I will be there. I'll get half of father's day with the family. And then I will get on my beloved Amtrak up to Boston, um, for game five and, uh,

We'll see if Brian Windhorst and I are doing our podcast amid confetti and revelry as we were last year in Denver in game five, or if we'll be doing it while making travel plans for the rest of the NBA finals. At some point, if the universe continues, this will happen. Again, this doesn't strike me as a particularly likely one, but the fun of sports is you never know.

And part of it is no one, even with the Draymond Green suspension in 2016, was like, oh yeah, the Cavs are going to come back from down 3-1 in this series. The Warriors are going to lose twice on their home court after losing nine times the entire regular season. It's going to be surprising. The Celtics over the Heat last year wouldn't have been terribly surprising. That one would have made a lot of sense had it actually been the first time. But other than that, it probably is going to be something that's going to come out of nowhere.

I'm expecting the Celtics to win in five at home. That's what usually happens here. They've been my pick all year. They were my pick in the series. They did enough to go up big in game three and gut out game three. That should have been the end of the series. But you did mention, you know, that we have mentioned that run. This is what I remember. You said something early like, you know, it looked like Dallas might be ready to let go of the rope 91 to 70 in game three.

Simmons thought the same thing. I was listening to his podcast. He's the body language doctor. He was examining the body language. I thought the same thing. Timeout, shoulders sag, everyone walks to the sideline, and it just feels like everyone knows that the series is over. And you just wonder what life is like if Boston...

Just makes a couple shots in a row coming out of that timeout and the Mavs don't make a couple shots in a row coming out of that timeout. I think it started with like PJ Washington just kind of walking in to a trail three and making it like you if that gets to like 97 71 or something like that.

You just wonder if tonight unfolds differently and if that comeback really did sort of invigorate the Mavs to get here. And this game certainly should invigorate them. But I'm picking Boston to win game five because that just seems like kind of what should happen. I don't know. I don't know.

That's how I feel, but we'll see, right? Yeah, and despite the point differential now being in Dallas' favor, I feel like it definitely was over the first three games. Like 3-0 Boston was a little unfair to the Mavericks. They had played well enough to win one of those last two games, either game two or game three that ended up being fairly close.

It didn't feel unfair to me. And I know people will throw the shot that I'd say it's much closer than that, blah, blah. It didn't feel that unfair to me only because of the late rally in game two to make it closer than it seemed. And obviously there's the controversial no call towards the end of that. And then the sort of fall from a head job that Boston did in game three. But I take your point. I disagree a little bit, but I take your point. Yeah, I mean, maybe unfair is not the best way to put it.

I think it's more that, you know, I don't know if you heard this from people in your life, that it was kind of like, wow, how is Boston up three nothing in the series? We expected a close series. And I think that element is where it could, there are scenarios where this could have been a two one series. So I'm glad for the Mavericks sake that they did not get swept because I, I think that would have, they would have been hard done by that.

Well, that's fine. Like, I get that. You know, and Boston has won. Boston was 15-2 in the playoffs coming into this game. That puts you in very rare territory if you can finish 16-2 or even 16-3. It's very rare. And the skeptics would say, well, you know, three of the games against Indiana were nail biters and these two of these three against Dallas were nail biters and, you know, they keep escaping by the skin of their teeth. And yeah, that's sort of factually true for some of these games.

I do think there's something to be said that no longer applies to the same degree after tonight. That I was talking to people and was like, there's something to be said for...

They either have played like 50, 50 games and won a little bit more maybe than you would expect in this playoff run or a hundred zero games. They don't play like 30, 70 games where they're down by 12 the whole time and they have to rally. They're either like, it's either nip and tuck and they win or they just win by a lot. It's like, they just, that's, there's something to be, that's what greatness is. It's like,

There are two types of games, either really close and we find a way to win most of them or we just win by a lot. And then, of course, tonight just blew that argument to smithereens. Well, I mean, the Cleveland and Miami losses were fairly lopsided for the nature of those. That's that's maybe Boston's when we lose, we're going to lose by a lot. But Dean Oliver, our ESPN analytics colleague, pointed this out.

on Twitter today that the Celtics have the most wins by 50 plus points in NBA history, tied for the most wins by 40 plus points in NBA history with this year's thunder, the most wins by 25 plus points in NBA history. Part of this is like margins are increasing. There's a little more volatility game to game, but Boston has really dominated a lot of the season. And

I think the Warriors example, the 2014-15 Warriors example, will be salient from the standpoint of that was a team that I think people wrote a lot that year about how wide open things were, even though Golden State was putting up this all-time regular season. And I think if Boston is able to finish it off, the fact that people thought it was as wide open as they did this year, while the Celtics were winning 64 games with one of the best net ratings of all time, will look similarly questionable in hindsight.

Well, look, I guarantee you that anyone within the Celtics who over the last 48 hours was doing the basketball reference searches for most wins, biggest differential, fewest playoff losses, you know, reading the tweets, including some by Bill yesterday about, you know, here are all the 80 win teams or whatever it was. I guarantee you today,

in the aftermath of this, they're all just sitting there like, forget all that. Just give us one more win. I don't care how. I don't care where. I don't care how ugly it is. Just get us to 4 and 16 and banner 18. Forget the history. We just got to finish this. And I would bet they finish it in game five. But like I said, the fun of this is you never know, KP. We'll see how game five looks. Any final thoughts before we say goodnight?

I'll give you one last SIG stat that just popped up in the stat. Players in NBA history with five plus threes in a quarter in a finals game. Kenny Smith was the first to do it. Ray Allen, Steph Curry, Tim Hardaway Jr. tonight. Look, maybe he earned himself minutes in game five. And I forgot to mention, I see, but just by the box where I will go back and watch the fourth quarter later.

I see by the box score, Peyton Pritchard made some twos late in the game. He was one of 13 in the finals coming into tonight, and I think missed his first three or four shots. So at one point, he was one of 16 and one of 17.

Someone on that bench has got to make some shots. And it's been Hauser until tonight, and it was not Pritchard at all. So maybe it'll carry over for one of those. We'll see on Monday. Monday night, Kevin Pelton, ESPN.com, grinding out great content all the time. It's wonderful to see you, and we'll see what life looks like in three days, my friend. Have fun in Boston.

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