NBA Finals A-to-Z

There's a lot going on in this series. We turn to the alphabet, in this Tuesday Newsletter Extravaganza, to help us compartmentalize it

The NBA Finals, which have shifted to my city of residence, are always multilayered.

This matchup, in particular, has enough woven within to inspire what I believe to be the first Finals A-to-Z that I've ever compiled.

Using 26 letters to break it down …

A is for Adam Silver:

The Commish has to be feeling himself right now. The NBA's new media-rights deal, with three or possibly even four partners in its final form, is legitimately on course to triple in total value compared to the nine-year, $24 billion pact that expires after next season. All that noise — for years — about sharp ratings declines didn't matter much in the end. As I've been saying for years to anyone who would listen: NBA ratings will become a concern only when they drag media rights fees down. For all the fretting about the All-Star Game's watchability and the advancing age of stars like LeBron James/Stephen Curry/Kevin Durant and the audience turnoff stemming from load management, there continues to be a robust appetite in the marketplace for this programming. A more robust appetite, it appears, than even the optimists realized.

B is for buzzer-beater:

We're probably not talking enough about how critical Payton Pritchard's heave at the third-quarter horn in Game 2 proved, shoving the Mavericks into a nine-point hole entering the fourth quarter rather than a much more manageable six points. Massive shot.

C is for chowder:

Whether it's chowder or a killer bisque, I want some top-shelf Boston soup before this series is over ... which is going to be challenging with a capital C if I only end up covering the games played in Dallas. I need some elite New England soup! (YES: Even in June!) And I've been distracted ever since Dallas Basketball's Dalton Trigg posted this picture from Boston Sail Loft shortly before Game 2 tipped off:

D is for duos:

Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown. Luka Dončić and Kyrie Irving. Jayson Tatum vs. Jaylen Brown? Think you get the point ... so much of the chatter this series generates, like it or not, tends to focus on the Celtics' tag team or the Mavericks' star twosome.

E is for eighteen:

The Celtics, with two more wins, will seal their 18th NBA championship and break a 17-all tie with their old purple-and-gold friends from Lakerland.

F is for my increasingly faulty memory:

Meaning that if I have ever assembled a Finals A-to-Z before, I have totally forgotten when.

G is for TD Garden:

I know I've been bringing it up often lately, but the Celtics' sudden five-game home winning streak — after going a middling 15-15 in their previous 30 playoff games in the Garden across the past four postseasons after leaving the neutral-site Walt Disney World bubble in Orlando — has been a huge key to the gathering momentum of this championship chase.

H is for the daunting Finals history Dallas faces:

Teams that fall into a 2-0 hole in the NBA Finals are 5-31 overall for a composite comeback success rate of 13.8%. Teams that won the first two games of the series at home, as the Celtics just did, are 28-5 in terms of going on to win the championship (84.8%).

I is for the international media:

Forgot what it looks like when a Finals-sized press corps from all over the world invades the American Airlines Center in downtown Dallas. The 2011 Finals felt like way more 13 years ago, thanks to that faulty memory again, when I caught a glimpse of the media horde at Tuesday's off-day practice availabilities. The league, for the record, says these Finals are being broadcasted to 214 countries and territories in 60 different languages and that the 13 combined international players in this series is a Finals record, surpassing the 10 in 2013 when Miami outlasted San Antonio in seven games. The Celtics feature Oshae Brissett (Canada), Al Horford (Dominican Republic), Svi Mykhailiuk (Ukraine), Kristaps Porziņģis (Latvia) and Neemias Queta (Portugal). The Mavericks counter with Dončić (Slovenia), Danté Exum (Australia), Josh Green (Australia), Maxi Kleber (Germany) and three Canadians: A.J. Lawson, Dwight Powell and Olivier-Maxence Prosper. Thus the number, based on my math, really should be adjusted to 12 since Irving, included by the league in this discussion because he was born in Australia, has represented the United States internationally.

J is for The Two Jays:

Porziņģis, Jrue Holiday and Derrick White have been the true difference-makers in the series so far, but Jayson and Jaylen merit a second mention because of the team ball they've played to facilitate what we saw during the first two games in Boston.

K is for Kyrie Irving and Kristaps Porziņģis:

The two guys playing their former teams — with Porziņģis halfway to savoring true vengeance — had to be allocated their own category. Especially with Porziņģis now dealing with a left posterior tibialis dislocation that threatens his availability for Wednesday night's Game 3. (Click the link embedded in the previous sentence for a full explanation of the foot injury from In Street Clothes' Jeff Stotts.) Other injuries, remember, have prevented Porziņģis from playing in Dallas in each of the past two seasons since the Mavericks dealt him to Washington in February 2022.

L is for Larry Bird.

Not only do I still reflexively think of Bird before any other Celtic you could possibly name but I am floored every time someone reminds me that Boston has only won one championship in the 31 full seasons since Bird's retirement shortly before the start of the 1992-93 campaign.

M is for Joe Mazzulla:

Pep Guardiola's favorite NBA coach, so routinely bashed in his first year after replacing Ime Udoka, is two wins away from a championship.

N is for Boston's nine consecutive wins in these playoffs:

Scroll down to Numbers Game to see what a big deal this is.

O is for the Larry O'Brien Trophy.

You could argue that this should have been a candidate for the L section since the trophy is so routinely referred to nowadays as The Larry. What can't be argued: The NBA, as we wrote April 24 in explaining why the league refuses to rename its championship trophy in David Stern's honor as I continue to insist that it should, markets its championship trophy with a more widespread marketing campaign with every passing season … which is why my name change proposal is unlikely to gain any traction. This is Year 2 of what the league is now calling its Larry O’Brien Trophy Tour and there is even a dedicated page on NBA.com that tracks all of the promotional activities involving The Larry.

📷: Via Getty Images and NBA.com.

P is for Plastic Man 2.0:

One of the highlights of these playoffs for me thus far: Getting to interview Derrick Jones Jr. after Dallas' Game 5 road win over the LA Clippers — after first calling the whole game alongside longtime Mavericks radio play-by-play Chuck Cooperstein on 97.1 FM — and telling Jones directly that I can't help but liken him to Stacey Augmon because of his left-handedness, his UNLV background and his Augmon-esque elasticity. Pretty sure Jones took it as a compliment.

Q is for Neemias Queta:

Thank you, Celtics. It's not often that one team can easily supply us with a Q and Z. Queta, Portugal's first-ever NBA player, took care of the first half of that equation.

R is for JJ Redick:

Talking about the Lakers' coaching search is an unavoidable (constant) sidebar in these Finals and that means talking about Redick on a daily basis no matter what he says as part of ABC/ESPN's broadcast team for the championship series for the first time.

S is for Slovenian sensation Dončić:

Luka was always going to get his own letter as the best player in these Finals, but I might have pushed it further down this ladder for spice and variety after letting Larry Legend commandeer our L slot.

T is for Boston's vaunted top six:

We've been talking about the Celtics' six main players as a collective all season. Throw in Al Horford with Tatum, Brown, Holiday, White and Porziņģis and they have lived up to billing through the first two games. Horford has started every game in Boston’s nine-game winning streak and, at 38, will obviously have to expand his role if Porziņģis is restricted by injury from here.

U is for the uncomfortable nature of championship-or-bust pressure:

Which, to be fair, hasn’t bothered Boston a bit in this series so far.

V is for Jeff Van Gundy:

The first Finals that Van Gundy hasn't called as an ABC/ESPN broadcaster in more than 15 years is graced by his presence regardless because JVG is a senior adviser to Celtics president of basketball operations Brad Stevens (who was featured here Monday). 

W is for Bill Walton:

I love that tributes to Walton, who passed away on May 27 at the age of 71, have been a constant in these Finals. My No. 1 goal for the rest of the series is obtaining one of the Walton lapel pins that I saw in circulation from afar during the two games in Boston.

X is for Xavier Tillman:

He hasn't played a second in this series, but let me expand that thought from the Queta section: Boston somehow supplied the Q, X and Z for this exercise. Maybe these Celtics are truly deeper than advertised. (Confession time: We might also have a soft spot for Tillman because this Substack was the first to report in January that he would be getting traded by Memphis before the Feb. 8 trade deadline.).

Y is for the youth of Dereck Lively II:

Lively only turned 20 on Feb. 12. Just a couple days later in Indianapolis I watched him bask in the glow of his first All-Star Weekend alongside his mother Kathy Drysdale, who only survived two more months after Indy because of a devastating battle with cancer that ultimately robbed her from Lively's life on April 13. Watching Dallas' rookie center play on without her in his maiden NBA playoff run, at basically the same age as my own two boys, I am routinely awed by his strength, demeanor and maturity.

Z is for Mike Zarren:

Boston's vice president of basketball operations isn't merely the much-needed Z who enables us to complete this assignment. He's even been tweeting a bit during this series and is known to love soccer as much as your faithful newsletter curator.  

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Sights and sounds

OK, OK.

Would you settle for sights only?

Here are a couple pictures off my phone, one from outside and one from inside, after returning to the American Airlines Center on Tuesday morning for the first time in about three weeks to pick up my Finals credential and spend some time around both teams on a practice day:

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Numbers Game

🏀 9

Remarkable stat when you think about the Celtics in franchise history terms ... courtesy of my fellow Substacker

Justin Kubatko

: Boston's current run of nine wins in a row accounts for its longest playoff winning streak ever.

🏀 1986

The previous team record, per Kubatko, was seven consecutive wins in the playoffs for the monster 1985-86 squad led by Larry Bird and so deep that Bill Walton came off the bench as the sixth man.

🏀 15-15

Included in those nine wins in a row, as we keep mentioning, are five consecutive home wins for the Celtics. Don't forget that Boston was a worrisome 15-15 in its previous 30 games at TD Garden across the past four postseasons before this crucial surge.

🏀 12

Dallas' Kyrie Irving has indeed lost his last 12 games against the Celtics as a Maverick and Brooklyn Net ... six in the regular season, six in the playoffs and seven of those games in Boston.

🏀 19.7

Worse yet, according to Kubatko, Irving is only averaging 19.7 points in those 12 games ... on 41.1% shooting from the field and 26.4% shooting from deep. 

🏀 0

The next 3-pointer Irving makes in these Finals will be his first. He's 0-for-8 from the 3-point line in the first two games of the series. 

🏀 9

With a near-flawless 26 points and 11 rebounds in Game 2, Boston's Jrue Holiday became only the ninth player in the Basketball Reference database to post a game with 25 points, 10 rebounds and zero turnovers since the league began tracking individual turnovers in 1977-78. The full list is embedded in this sentence.

🏀 26

Holiday's 26 points in Game 2 also made him Boston's leading scorer for just the second time all season. It first happened Jan. 15 in the regular season (22 points) in a victory at Toronto.

🏀 31.6

Boston has seized a 2-0 Finals lead despite Jayson Tatum's 12-for-38 shooting from the field (31.6%) and 4.5 turnovers per game. 

🏀 7

Tatum's seven assists in Sunday's second quarter represented the highest mark for a single quarter in the NBA Finals since an eight-assist quarter by Utah's John Stockton in 1998.

🏀 10

Luka Dončić now has 10 career triple-doubles in his playoff carer, tying him with Larry Bird, Draymond Green and Rajon Rondo for sixth place in league history.

🏀 11

The next playoff triple-double Dončić registers will pull him even with his coach, Jason Kidd, on 11.

🏀 4

Dončić is one of just four players in Finals history to post a triple-double with at least 30 points in a loss. The others according to Kubatko's research: LeBron James (twice), Charles Barkley and Jerry West.