The Mavs have a couple of problems on their hands.
First, they need to shake some shooters free for Luka Doncic to find so he can have more than seven potential assists. That's an ungodly low number for Doncic.
By contrast, Jayson Tatum had 14 potential assists (five were converted), Al Horford had 12 (three converted), Jrue Holiday had nine (five converted), and Jaylen Brown had eight (two converted). So Doncic only one assist with six not cashed in shows Boston’s defense was pretty good. On the other side of the ball, the 28 potential assists left on the table with those four players shows some better shooting from the Celtics might have made Game 1 worse for the Mavs.
That's part of Dallas’ second problem. More on that later.
How do the Mavs try to free players up when Boston did such a great job staying home on the shooters and daring Doncic to beat them one-on-one?
Dallas didn’t get too crazy with their pick-setting in Game 1, mostly preferring to try to force switches onto advantageous matchups. The problem is that Boston was sniffing out the actions ahead of time, pre-switching, and avoiding the matchups Dallas wanted to attack
Watch Kristaps Porzingis as the play develops direct Sam Hauser onto Maxi Kleber. Instead of Kyrie Irving attacking Porzingis, he has to go against Hauser, who did a great job staying in front of him and forcing the off-balance shot.
Instead of slowly going after matchups, the Mavs will probably try to speed things up a bit and throw multiple screens into the play.
I dipped back into the Timberwolves series to show you when they ran some effective defense. For all the Timberwolves success defensively all year long, their discipline against Dallas was subpar. This is what the Mavs are hoping to shake out of the Celtics.
Irving and a big setting picks for Doncic causes a bit of havoc. Doncic should have swung it back to Irving here, and a drive left would have opened up a corner 3-pointer for PJ Washington. By drawing a bunch of defenders together, getting them all shifting one way, and reversing it, the Mavs could manufacture some advantages and open looks.
This is called a double drag. With Doncic coming up the left sideline in transition, a pair of quick screens are set, with the first screener (Daniel Gafford) running to the dunker spot where he becomes a lob threat. The second screener (Washington) goes to the corner, a shot Boston worked very hard to take away. In the midst of it all, Doncic gets to the middle of the floor and collapses the defense before kicking it out for a right corner 3.
Doncic can also start off the ball to get to the action they want.
Irving setting the pin-down screen for Doncic while Gafford waits up top for a handoff is a modified way to get the same desired result as a standard pick-and-roll. If the defense overreacts, a couple of swings can lead to the corner 3-pointers Dallas wants so badly. Boston held the Mavs to their lowest corner 3-point shooting rate of the season, so the Mavs have to figure out how to generate more if they're going to keep up. These types of actions are the Mavs’ best bet for getting at least some confusion in Boston’s defense.
The problem for Dallas is that Boston’s defensive discipline was off the charts in Game 1. From the pre-switching to forcing drives into help and keeping Doncic out of the middle of the floor, the Celtics knew what they wanted to take away -- lobs and corner 3s -- and they were happy to live with the rest.
Porzingis’ return is a huge reason they're able to do this. Yeah, Rudy Gobert was the Defensive Player of the Year, but the Timberwolves made poor coverage decisions and they had too many guys Dallas could target for various reasons. There's no Mike Conley on Boston for Doncic to go after. There's no Karl-Anthony Towns making dumb decisions that lead to fouls. Boston knew the plan, they players stuck to it, and it worked.
Watch Porzingis take away the lob threat (with help from Derrick White) and then still challenge the shot at the rim.
This is standard drop coverage. So step one, great screen navigation by Brown to push Jaden Hardy into 2-point land. White is in position to both help on a lob and still close out to the corner. Porzingis is simply dropping to make sure the lob isn’t there, but he’s playing perfectly in space to challenge the shot at the rim.
Having Porzingis on the floor for non-Doncic minutes is brilliant. There's less creation on the floor, meaning the Mavs have to lean on Irving and their execution to come through.
Which brings me to Dallas’s second problem: Luka Doncic. Much like Homer Simpson’s famous ode to alcohol, Doncic is the cause of, and solution to, all of the Mavs problems.
The solutions to everything Dallas needs lie in Doncic’s hands. They need him to generate 50-60 points a night between his scoring and assists. The Celtics know they won’t stop his scoring, so they just want to make that a little tougher if they can while setting up a blockade on all of his passing routes.
That's step one, which I’ve laid out before. Doncic the scorer sans passing is not going to kill you.
Step two is working him to the point of exhaustion, which Boston did incredibly well. That's where the Porzingis minutes in non-Doncic lineups come in. Winning those non-Doncic minutes as thoroughly as Boston did forces Jason Kidd to go back to Doncic sooner. The less rest he gets, the worse he’s going to be late in the game. Going on a big run when Doncic is sitting is a great way to get him back onto his feet.
Attacking Doncic is so important, especially early on. Here’s one possession that I loved, and Boston didn’t even score.
Look at how hard Doncic is working on defense. Possessions like this early in the game is why Doncic started giving up defensively later in the game.
Watch Doncic let Brown drive right past him and collapse the defense and then never move. He should have gotten out to Tatum, but he didn’t have anything left at that point.
The Celtics turned Doncic into a one-dimensional defensive liability. Dallas has to figure out how to handle that. The only thing I can think of is to willingly give up the Doncic matchup and treat Tatum and Brown like Boston is treating Doncic. Their only hope is lulling the Celtics into iso play offensively and getting them away from these kinds of drive-and-kicks. Boston can avoid that by playing fast.
“If we are walking the ball up the floor and we start the offense at 17 or whatever, it's different from you starting your offense at 20 because you've got the ball up the floor,” Brown said. “If you've got a little bit more time, maybe you can scan the floor a little bit. But for the most part, you want to kind of make quick decisions and keep the ball moving.”
Keeping the ball moving requires offensive discipline. The Mavs blitzed Tatum a lot to get the ball out of his hands and Boston made them pay. If they don’t double him anymore, Tatum will be able to go one-on-one more often, but that doesn't mean the Celtics stand there and watch.
“The balance is having proper spacing. Making the right play,” Joe Mazzulla said. “I thought we did a good job of fighting for our spacing, making the right two-on-one reads. That's more important than anything else. And so I think regardless of who we are trying to attack, making sure we are at the proper spacing and making sure we are making the right play based on where the two-on-one read is is the most important thing.”
The Mavs will change things up, and they will be better at a few things. But if Boston remains disciplined on both ends, they should be able to adjust well and handle what the Mavs throw at them. Then they just need to continue being relentless with their offensive attack and trust that their shot-generation will get them the open looks from the right spots to come out on top.