Didn't It Have to Be This Way?
In that State Farm ad with Ludacris, why doesn't Jake from State Farm tell the homeowners how to turn the water off? Does he really think everything can be fixed with a claim to the State Farm app? Pretty sure that doesn't help much in that moment. Does he have literally any other advice? Get it together, Jake from State Farm. And why is Google continuously trying to show people how to make their photos dishonest by erasing people out of them and such? We're trying to have a civilization here, Google!
Oh right, basketball. Hi. What a game. This game was a perfect microcosm of this era of Boston Celtics basketball. Unflappable, so talented, led by two of the best players in franchise history, playing stifling defense, and yes, they made it a little more interesting than it needed to be, before the "never a doubt!" exhale. And now they are one win away from a championship.
This game looked a lot like Game 2 in the first half. In both games, Dallas came out guns blazing as the C's settled into things and asserted their will. Tonight, the Mavericks got off to an even hotter start, but the response from Boston was just as swift. After Dallas got up 25-12 on a Kyrie Irving three pointer, there was a brief moment when I was starting to get concerned. And then the Jay's ran off eight straight points before getting Sam Hauser into the action, and three minutes after Dallas went up 13, it was a two-point game again.
Continuing the pattern from Game 2, the offense in the second quarter was a little ugly on both ends. But the third quarter is where things really diverged. The Celtics shot 26.9% better than the Mavs did in the third quarter – easily the biggest difference for a quarter in these NBA Finals.
Just as important though, was how the C's turned off the Mavericks offense in the second half. In the regular season, Dallas posted a .481 field goal percentage. In the first round against the Clippers, Dallas shot .465 from the field. They shot .454 in the second round against Oklahoma City, and an even .500 in the Western Conference Finals against Minnesota. Through these three games, Dallas is shooting .444 – the worst they have all season. But the breakdown is even more stark:
Forty one point eight percent through three games. The Celtics have won these three games because they have put on a defensive clinic. Even tonight, when the Mavericks were making their late comeback, it wasn't because they were hitting every shot. The Celtics offense vanished for eight minutes, but when it woke up, the Mavs didn't have enough. They shot 9-for-21 in the fourth quarter. They haven't scored 100 points in any of these first three games. This is the first real time all season that has happened (it's technically the second time, but that's only because they punted the final two games of the regular season, and then had a slow start to the LA series).
Even with the great defense, it was still a close game in the final minute. The difference in those final minutes was that the Celtics continued to play team basketball. Jaylen Brown, Derrick White, Jayson Tatum, and then Brown again scored the final four baskets before the end-of-game free throws. On Dallas' side, Irving either took the initial shot or made the pass that led to their initial shot on six straight possessions from 3:37 to 0:25. He completely dominated the ball, and that final shot was the perfect example of the differences between the two teams. Kyrie Irving badly missed a 26-foot three-point attempt, and it was exactly the kind of shot the Celtics never took. Take a look at the floor when Irving goes up with it:
You know what Jayson Tatum or Jaylen Brown or Jrue Holiday or Derrick White or Al Horford are going to do with the ball in that situation? They're going to kick it to the WIDE OPEN Tim Hardaway Jr. in the right corner. Dallas got a guy that wide open maybe three or four times the entire game. JB clearly got caught ball watching there. The Jay's took a few three pointers in this game I would have preferred they hadn't taken, but none of those shots went up when they had a better option. They're passing there. Irving, however, chose to take an off-balance three with the much taller Al Horford all over him. The shot barely hit the front rim, and when Dallas didn't get the long rebound (Dereck Lively II had a much better Game 3, but he's voluntarily standing out of bounds when the shot goes up. Sure.), the game was over.
Kyrie Irving was on his game tonight, but in this moment, he did not make the correct basketball play. He tried to be the hero. It was from the same spot on the floor as his go-ahead shot in Game 7 of the 2016 NBA Finals, but it was far more out of control. Here's the 2016 shot, for those of you who don't have a photographic memory:
He's calm. He's not on the run. The defender is his height or shorter, so he gets a clean look at the hoop. None of that happened on tonight's shot.
Luka Didn't Want that Smoke
When the third quarter ended, there was a lot of talk on my text chain about how Luka Doncic was fading fast. In my opinion, he had been playing poorly most of the night, but when he had failed to move a muscle as Jaylen Brown drove past him for a rim rattling dunk to close out the third quarter, he looked very, very tired. It wasn't the first time. At one point, he missed six straight shots. At the end of the first quarter, Jayson Tatum had gotten a free dunk because Luka fell to the ground trying to draw a foul on his three-point attempt, and by the time he stood up Derrick White was firing his pass up court to Tatum.
The foul hunting and lack of hustle on defense reared its head in a perfect storm in the fourth quarter. He started the fourth quarter with two fouls, but picked up his final four fouls in less than eight minutes to foul out. He started the quarter by trying to run over JB close to the hoop in what was a very easy call. Two minutes later, he hacked Payton Pritchard three times trying to get a steal because he didn't want to chase him before he was whistled for this fourth foul. It was so obvious he didn't even argue the call. Four minutes and three missed shots later, he hooked Jaylen in the lane, and flopped to the ground trying to buy the foul call. It didn't work. A mere 26 seconds later, rather than try to play disciplined basketball knowing that he had five fouls, he once again tried to buy a call by flopping to the ground, but his feet were not set and when JB also fell, the refs sent Luka packing.
For the game, Luka shot 11-for-27 from the field, and 1-for-7 from three-point range. He made all four of his free throws at least, but in the fourth quarter, Luka melted once again – he shot 1-for-5 and committed four fouls. He hasn't hit more than one shot in any of the fourth quarters in the series, and overall in the fourth he's shooting 3-for-15, and 0-for-4 from three. You haven't heard the media talk about this yet because everyone wants to talk about Jayson Tatum's shooting, but Luka has been abysmal in these fourth quarters.
Luka and the Mavericks can complain about the refs all they want (the C's were actually whistled for more fouls, and the Mavs shot more free throws overall), but that is a far cry from the clutch, superstar performance we've come to expect from him in close games. Certainly, there will be apologists that claim he's too hurt, but no one was making that excuse when he was draining game-winning stepback threes over Rudy Gobert. Luka's fourth-quarter struggles might not be the biggest reason the Mavericks are in an 0-3 hole, but it's certainly very high on the list.
I'm Sorry, Xavier!
Before the game, I wrote the following about who should get the minutes Kristaps Porzingis wasn't going to play:
(Xavier Tillman, to be clear, would be my last choice. I think Tillman is too slow and/or too short for this series, period. I think he would have been a good fit had the C's matched up with the Denver Nuggets, but I really don't want to see him on the court in this series at all.).
Xavier, baby, I take it all back! You were incredible tonight. I was right in the sense that Al Horford was going to play more minutes and that one player would come off the bench for ~10 minutes, and that's what happened. Horford played 36:47 and Tillman played 11:13. And he was awesome in those minutes. That performance is going to right up there with the James Posey and PJ Brown performances during the 2008 championship run. Tillman pulled down four rebounds, blocked two shots, and hit the only shot he took – a corner three that pushed Boston's lead to 13 and sent the bench into a fit of jubilation.
I'm sorry I doubted you Xavier. It won't happen again.
Jason Kidd Is Still Searching
One other thing I pointed out in my last piece was that Dallas coach Jason Kidd was still searching for the right lineups to play in this series, and he spent most of Game 3 searching once again. Kidd played nine guys in the first quarter, and 11 players in the first half. He finally benched Maxi Kleber in the fourth quarter, and shortened his rotation in the fourth to seven guys, and had more success. Perhaps that will be a blueprint for Game 4, but perhaps it's too late now.