I know what the outside world is saying about the finals even though I try to ignore it because it's so often uninformed, unlike SoSH, but I'd love to hear more from the 5% or so of voters who think the Mavericks are taking this.
I've said many times that I'm no expert but I think if Indiana had made the finals (maybe with fewer injuries) they'd have beaten either Dallas or Minnesota. Variance occurs and if these finals are played 100 times I could see a handful of possibilities where Dallas wins. I just can't see a clear path to victory for the Mavericks, so I'd genuinely like to hear more about why people voted that way.
Are you just gambling on the series and hoping the longer odds pay out?
Im one of these folks so I’ll lay my case out before it starts.
Fundamentally, as I said in a GT last week I just don’t trust this team. They played 5,5, and 4 games to get here this year so there’s very little to complain about and I know how incredibly positive everyone here is but I think good teams can disrupt what they want to do offensively and they have only sparingly shown that they can knuckle down and play phenomenal defense for long periods. For me, they’re like a math problem personified as a basketball team where everyone is good to great and they rely on that being good enough over 48 minutes. Which is exceptional when you’re playing teams missing their star players and who are just inferior but Dallas is coming in with their talent more or less intact and I think the Celtics are going to have to adjust. Overall, they just can be a bit sloppy and while that didn’t bite them against Indiana or Cleveland those were “closer” than they should have been, imo, and now they face a step up. This is maybe a long winded way of saying something that is consistently mocked around here but I just don’t trust them to execute at a very high level for 48 minutes for 7 games and dropping a game or 2 may be the difference.
More specific to this series, I think we have struggled to contain guards more than one would expect with the defensive reputation of our guards but the 1/5 screen with Horford sagging has been a problem area and Dallas has two guys who should be able to really work that. I don’t believe Porzingis will be able to play a normal load and will likely be slower than usual. They mostly had him in drop all regular season anyway. I think Dallas will stagger minutes for Irving and Luka and basically can get that attack plan on any trip down the floor.
Secondly, Hauser has turned into a pumpkin and Pritchard is probably unplayable against these guards for anything but the smallest stretches so secondary scoring may be a concern. They got away with this against Indiana but these playoff series usually require a guy or two from a bench to really step up and unless Hauser re-finds his shot this week I don’t even know who that might be for the Celtics. I felt they slipped into some bad habits against Indiana at times and really focused on iso ball but Indiana couldn’t put enough on them offensively to have that snowball on them the way it sometimes does. We are far more likely to see Dallas scoring in bunches and when the Cs slow down and the 3s aren’t falling they really grind their offense and I could see a game or two getting away this way.
Finally, I saw a post above about how we might defend them better at the run but it doesn’t map for me. Gobert is as good as there is in this league at rim protection and they free him up to do it. The Porzingis injury has left us really thin at that position and while we have survived it in the smaller tests thus far it was one position we really didn’t have depth in. If Dallas is as good as they seem they’re going to hurt us there.
Of course, the Cs are very very good and I think they’ve improved tremendously on some things this year. Turnovers were such a massive problem the last few years and they’ve really cleaned that up. I’m not typing the above to suggest that we have no chance or don’t belong or anything like that. I really respect what Dallas did to get through the west and didn’t expect them to handle a Wolves team that dispatched Denver. I think it’s really hard for us to contextualize how good this Dallas team is because everyone here is so stat driven and they were not good until mid season so everything gets dragged down but I think that Minnesota team was the real deal and they just brushed them aside.
Basically I think they’re up for 7 really close battles and I just think this team can still be sloppy at the little details that often make champions. I’m probably higher on Dallas than most and lower on us than most so I have it going the distance and my pessimism about the devil I know wins
