2024 NBA Finals preview: Everything you need to know for Celtics-Mavericks, including our series prediction

After a grueling seven-month campaign — followed by a restorative week off! — the 2023-24 NBA season has now reached its conclusion. The Eastern Conference champion Boston Celtics (64-18)— the East’s No. 1 seed, and the top overall seed in the postseason bracket — will take on the Western Conference champion Dallas Mavericks (50-32)in the 2024 NBA Finals.

It’s the first postseason meeting between the two franchises. Boston enters looking for the 18th NBA championship in its glittering franchise history, and its first since Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen hoisted the Larry O’B back in 2008. Dallas seeks a second league title to join the iconic 2011 crown won by Dirk Nowitzki and a slew of high-end complementary role players … including Jason Kidd, who leads this iteration of the Mavs from the coaching box. The NBA Finals tip off on Thursday at 8:30 p.m. ET.

How the Celtics got here

By acing most of the tests they faced, and passing the others. Team president Brad Stevens augmented Boston’s existing core — All-NBA wings Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, Derrick White, Al Horford — with reinforcements, swinging offseason trades for Kristaps Porziņģis and Jrue Holiday. The result was the NBA’s best top six, a unit that opened the season 11-2 and never looked back.

The Celtics finished the season with the NBA’s No. 1 offense and No. 3 defense, outscoring opponents by 11.3 points per 100 possessions, according to Cleaning the Glass — just the ninth time in the last 20 years that a team’s net rating topped plus-10. Boston lapped the rest of the East, finishing a staggering 14 games ahead of the second-place Knicks and becoming just the 26th team in NBA history to win 64 or more games. (Fifteen of the preceding 25 won the title … which actually seems kind of low.)

Winning the top seed earned the C’s a favorable path through the postseason, though nobody could have known just how favorable injuries would make it: no Jimmy Butler or Terry Rozier for the Heat in Round 1; no Jarrett Allen and only three games of Donovan Mitchell for the Cavaliers in Round 2; only two games of Tyrese…

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Author : Yahoo Sports

Publish date : 2024-06-05 14:19:45

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