How do Mavs and Celtics stack up? Inside the numbers of the 2024 NBA Finals


In one corner, out of the Eastern Conference: the Boston Celtics. No team won more games than Boston, who went 64-18 in the regular season. That’s quite a feat considering no team won 60 games in the 2022-23 season. To get to the NBA Finals, the Celtics beat the No. 8 seed Miami Heat in five games, the No. 4 seed Cleveland Cavaliers in five games, and swept the No. 6 seed Indiana Pacers. Boston did not need to face the No. 2 New York Knicks or the No. 3 seed Milwaukee Bucks, two teams that fell to the Pacers.
In the other corner, out of the Western Conference: the Dallas Mavericks. While the Celtics aren’t going to face a single top-three seed this postseason, Dallas has arrived at the NBA Finals by beating the fourth-seeded LA Clippers in six games, the top-seeded Oklahoma City Thunder in six games, and the No. 3 seed Minnesota Timberwolves in five games. Dallas did not need to face the second-seeded Denver Nuggets, the defending champions who lost a Game 7 to the Timberwolves despite holding a 20-point third-quarter lead in the semifinals.
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The Celtics will be looking to break a tie with the Los Angeles Lakers, the two franchises with 17 NBA championships. Sure, starting in 1959, Boston won eight consecutive titles (eight-peated? Octo-peated?) and nine of the 10 NBA titles in the 1960s and has won only one title since 1986, but all of their championships have come during the shot-clock era. Standing in their way are the Mavericks, a team looking to win their second championship and making their first NBA Finals appearance that does not involve the Miami Heat and Dwyane Wade; Dallas lost the 2006 finals (Wade was MVP) but won in 2011 (Dirk Nowitzki was MVP).
There are a lot of numbers to get to over the next week, so here’s a first look at them:
When it comes to rankings, the Boston Celtics topped the list in several notable categories this season. As part of the best offense in the NBA, the Celtics had the lowest turnover percentage in the league, an advantage they should be able to maintain against a Mavericks defense that ranked 17th in opponent turnover percentage. A player to watch here: shooting guard Derrick White, who led Boston with 5.2 assists per game and averaged only 1.5 turnovers per game.
The only defense better than the Celtics this season was the Timberwolves. But no team kept opponents off the free-throw line as well as Boston did. That might not be an issue against the Mavericks overall, as they ranked 13th in free-throw-attempt rate this season. Boston also led the league for the season in rim protection, though the Mavericks were the best-rim-protection defense after the All-Star break. That has carried over into the postseason.
Luka Doncic led the NBA in scoring this season with 33.9 points per game, and he’s the first scoring leader to play in that season’s NBA Finals since Stephen Curry in 2016. Curry’s Golden State Warriors won a league-record 73 games and had a 3-1 lead in the 2016 NBA Finals, but the Cleveland Cavaliers fought back to win a Game 7 on the road to capture the championship.
Doncic is attempting to be the first scoring champion to win a title in the same season since Hall of Famer Shaquille O’Neal did it with the Lakers in 2000. Overall, scoring champions are 11-8 in the NBA Finals, with Hall of Famer Michael Jordan accounting for six of the 11 wins.
The other players to win a scoring title in the same season they won the league championship: Joe Fulks with the 1947 Warriors, George Mikan with the 1949 and 1950 Lakers, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (then known as Lew Alcindor) with the 1971 Bucks.
The Mavericks averaged 1.056 points per possession on all isolation plays which was second-best in the league behind only the LA Clippers, per Synergy. The Celtics ranked third with 1.036 points per possession.
This series features four of the 33 players who had at least 200 isolation possessions (including passes) this season: Doncic, Mavericks shooting guard Kyrie Irving and Boston Celtics All-Stars Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown. This will be an exceptionally isolation-heavy series between two teams that ranked in the bottom-10 in passes per game in the regular season.
Expect an abundance of 3s in this series. Boston led the league in makes (16.5) this season while Dallas was third behind Golden State in makes (14.6). The Celtics were also first in 3-point attempts (42.5) while Dallas was second (39.5).
What will vary is the teams’ approach to hoisting those 3s. Per Second Spectrum, Boston made the most catch-and-shoot 3s per game this season at 11.4, while Dallas only ranked 20th (9.0). But Dallas has the leader in pull-up 3s in Doncic, who made 221 of Dallas’ league-leading 414 pull-up 3s. Boston ranked second behind Dallas in pull-up 3s, with Tatum making 145 pull-up 3s to rank fourth in the league behind Doncic, Curry, and Milwaukee Bucks All-Star Damian Lillard.
Dallas has decreased its 3-point attempts during the course of the season as 44.9 percent of the Mavericks’ field goal attempts before the All-Star break were 3s, ranking second behind only Boston. After the All-Star break and with a roster fortified with upgraded bigs in starters P.J. Washington and Daniel Gafford, the Mavericks’ 3-point attempts dipped to 42.4 percent, ranking sixth in the NBA. In the postseason, 40.9 percent of Dallas field goal attempts have been 3s, which would have ranked ninth in the regular season. The Mavericks are still relatively jump-shot heavy, but not as extreme as a Celtics team that has 3-point shooters among their top eight players when fully healthy.