🏀 This Week In Basketball can only ponder the true meaning of home-court advantage in the modern NBA

How hard will it be for the Celtics and Mavericks to win road games in these NBA Finals? Let's discuss

The Minnesota Timberwolves briefly became the new favorites in the Western Conference by winning three games on the Denver Nuggets' floor in the second round to oust the defending champions.

Then the Dallas Mavericks abruptly sent Minnesota home for the summer and surprisingly seized the West's berth in the NBA Finals by winning three times on the Timberwolves' floor in the conference finals.

So ...

High on the list of questions I have about a Finals matchup teeming with storylines is this one: Before we get to Luka & Kyrie vs. The Two Jays … or Joe Mazzulla vs. Jason Kidd … or the opportunities for vengeance against their old teams looming for Kyrie Irving and Kristaps Porziņģis … I’m fixated on how many road wins it will take in this series for the Boston Celtics or the Mavericks to become the NBA's new champions.

As we've been writing about all season on this Substack, homecourt advantage is simply not what it once was in the NBA. Teams went 668-562 this season at home for a composite winning percentage of .5431 — lowest in league history. Home teams have been a bit more reliable judging by the much smaller sample size of these playoffs at 44-33 (.571) ... but Boston and Dallas are a combined 13-2 on the road this postseason.

The Celtics didn't lose a single road playoff game in six tries in their Eastern Conference matchups with Miami, Cleveland and Indiana. All three of those teams, though, were playing shorthanded because of major injuries. Also: There's no dodging the curious reality that, starting with the 2020-21 playoffs in the NBA's first post-bubble season, Boston is a bizarrely mortal 18-15 at the Garden.

The Mavericks, meanwhile, have been even more impressive on their travels this spring given the quality of the opposition, going 7-2 thanks to five consecutive road victories across the last two rounds.

The NBA is about to crown its sixth different champion in a span of six seasons, which hasn't happened since the 1974-75 through 1979-80 seasons. The ever-receding notion of homecourt advantage, presumably fueled at least in part by teams' ever-increasing reliance on the 3-pointer and how quickly sizable deficits can be wiped out in the modern NBA, only adds to the leaguewide parity we've been seeing since the Stephen Curry-led Golden State Warriors made five consecutive trips to the NBA Finals from 2014-15 through 2018-19.

Boston is known as one of the league's most unfriendly settings for visiting teams, but how much will the noise actually unsettle Dallas? And how, given the setting, do you explain that aforementioned 18-15 home mediocrity?

While Irving is obviously bracing for a hellacious amount of vitriol Thursday night when these Finals finally get going, as he returns to the league’s grandest stage for the first time since 2017 after a very messy Boston breakup, his Mavericks just won a Game 1 for the first time under Jason Kidd in the Minnesota series. Dallas is 5-1 in playoff series in the Kidd Era but had to win four of them after going 1-0 down.

The Mavericks' seven road victories in these playoffs to date lead the league. One more would represent a new league record in a single postseason, breaking a tie with four teams (Boston in 2022, Cleveland in 2017 and Houston in both 1995 and 1981).

BTW: Special shoutout for those '81 Rockets, starring Moses Malone and coached by Del Harris, who reached the NBA Finals despite a sub-.500 record (40-42) in the regular season.

Onto the rest of the standout stuff from the week we just completed ....

Stories of the Week (published here)

Monday: This Week In Basketball examines Dallas' remarkable second-half surge and begins a two-day tribute to the one and only Bill Walton.

Tuesday: The Luckiest Guy in the World has left us.

Friday: The Mavericks took the long way, largely uncharted, to reach the NBA Finals.

Saturday: Community NBA Finals Predictions Thread. 

Sunday: The latest NBA free agent and coaching carousel chatter.

Games of the Week (that I attended)

The answer sadly is none.

I made it back onto U.S. soil from my brief soccer getaway to England with Photo Editor Aaron Stein hours before Dallas' Game 5 series-clinching rout of Minnesota. My plan was always rejoining the Western Conference for Game 6 (and a Game 7 if necessary), but the Mavericks wouldn't let it get their far.

So I was blanked in terms of in-person attendance last week and, thanks to the drawn-out Finals schedule, appear unlikely to see a game from an in-arena seat again until this series reaches Dallas for Game 3 on June 12. I’ll be watching Thursday's Game 1 from afar for sure; my Game 2 plans remain TBD.

Podcasts of the Week (that I co-hosted)

The latest edition of #thisleague UNCUT, taped Sunday and posted Monday alongside Turner Sports' Chris Haynes, is here:

Athlete of the Week

This category takes me back to my days covering high school sports, but I couldn't resist. Nets guard Dennis Schröder, with one year left on his contract next season at $13 million, had to be singled out for commendation here after he officially became a two-sport athlete Wednesday by playing for FC Germania Bleckenstedt in the sixth tier of German soccer.

The Landesliga Braunschweig is not to be confused with the Bundesliga that houses Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund, but it is still a very high level of football for a professional basketball player. Schröder played 62 minutes against SC Göttingen before being substituted in a 5-1 defeat.

Signage of the Week

On a soccer trip that featured two visits to Wembley for Aaron and me, with signage promoting Saturday's Champions League final at Wembley Stadium pretty much everywhere we went, I was pleasantly surprised to see some basketball promotion in London.

This poster, which includes the Celtics' Jrue Holiday alongside some slightly more famous names, greeted us every time we hopped onto the Jubilee line at the London Bridge station:

Meal of the Week

The incomparable sea bass ceviche at Wright Brothers in the famed Borough Market is tantalizingly pictured here.

I enjoyed it, sans blueberries and paired with a scrumptious fish soup, three times in six days in London. In retrospect I wish I went 6 for 6.

Theme Song of the Week

I know, I know.

Roundball Rock!

That's inevitably the intro music on your mind at the minute amid a rising belief that NBC will reacquire a slice of the league's broadcasting rights after a run as the NBA's primary national broadcaster from 1990-91 through 2001-02 which so many remember so fondly.

As an incurable nostalgist myself, I totally get it.

I simply remain far more partial, all these years later, to the NBA on CBS theme music of the 1980s, which regular readers know I consider to be the NBA's most intoxicating decade.

A tweet Friday highlighting the 40-year-old setup for a Lakers/Celtics Finals game in 1984 ... I think I've watched it 20 times already. That's the theme music that truly moves me. As a dreamer in my youth, I really believed that I would be able to dunk the ball if I listened to that song often enough.

The problem back then, of course, is that such music wasn't readily available on loop several decades before the advent of social media. It had to be recorded onto a VHS or cassette tape to be easily replayed.

Quote of the Week

"Bill and I were both painfully shy as children. We both found basketball to be a haven for our social awkwardness. The difference is that through the years Bill was able to overcome his reserve and become outgoing and gregarious in social settings while I remained reticent. Whenever we were together at a gathering, he bloomed. His enthusiastic personality and sincere concern for others inspired everyone around him. I marveled that he was never afraid to express his unapologetic love of people. He had wanted to be more like me on the court, I wanted to be more like him off the court."

— Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, via his must-read Substack, paying tribute to friend, longtime rival and fellow former UCLA Bruin Bill Walton, who died last week at age 71.

Final Word(s) of the Week

As I've mentioned often previously, I loved loved LOVED This Week In Baseball in my youth and have frequently compiled what I've referred to as TWIB Notes on this Substack to pay homage to the great Mel Allen and that life-changing show which debuted in 1977. Now my goal is to make it more of a full-on roundup of what I wrote, said, did, saw and maybe even ate, bought, etc., in a given week … with categories that I suspect will evolve as I get a better handle on what this piece should look like. Your feedback is appreciated in the comments section below.

(Editor’s note: After affixing two banners to this file for several weeks in a row, at the top and at the bottom, it is probably time to concede that running This Week In Basketball on Mondays has become a thing … which unfortunately crowds out Monday Musings. The NBA, of course, always names its Players of the Week on Mondays during the regular season, so maybe I shouldn’t fight it.)