Game 1 of the 2024 NBA Finals between the Dallas Mavericks and Boston Celtics has come to an end. Fans who were able to watch or follow the game will be aware that the Celtics took a commanding lead to start the game and never looked back to finish the match with a final score of 107-89.
While there is no taking away any credit or attention from the Celtics for winning and defending their home court, there must be a fair amount of fans who are wondering why the Mavericks lost this game and where the team went wrong. After all, correcting those errors will give them a much better chance of winning Game 2.
With that being said, let us take a closer look and find out more about what Luka Doncic had to say regarding his team’s plan for the next game.
Kyrie Irving appeared to be suffocated by the Boston Celtics crowd
Although it can be considered unfair to hold any one player accountable for the loss of a team, there is no getting around the fact that Kyrie Irving did not live up to expectations in Game 1. He made just 6 of 19 shot attempts and appeared to be rattled by the Celtics crowd. On the contrary, Boston made a barrage of three-pointers that gave their team a commanding lead during the initial stages of Game 1.
Since Luka Doncic was still feeling the loss heading into Game 1, he did not go into great detail regarding what his team did wrong. The Mavs star kept things quite brief while discussing his mindset and thoughts heading into Game 2.
“Their spacing is great and they have a lot of shooters. So I think we gotta do a better job taking those 3s away…Like I said right now. We gotta take those 3s away. That’s what hurts us the most…Just focus on the next game. I think we got really good shots. Just didn’t make them. But we gotta go game by game. Now Game 1 is over. We gotta watch film what we did wrong and focus on it for the next one.”The outcome of most games is usually decided by the winning team making the right plays and the losing side making errors or just missing shots. Luka Doncic implied just that but continues to remain confident in his team to defeat the Boston Celtics.
Luka Doncic focused heavily on scoring and did not facilitate for the Dallas Mavericks
As Game 1 came to a conclusion, the statistics soon revealed that the Boston Celtics had 23 assists throughout the Game while the Dallas Mavericks had just 9. Given that the Celtics had 9 blocks, this undoubtedly speaks to the fact that there was not a lot of ball movement and coordination among the Mavs for Game 1. Doncic has been the main facilitator for his team but had just one assist in this game.
Adding to that, a poor scoring performance from Kyrie Irving who finished the night with 12 points and Dereck Lively III scoring just 2 points and racking up a lot of foul calls against him, it is no real surprise that the Celtics won in this manner. Fans are left wondering if the Dallas Mavericks will be able to make the necessary adjustments and address the issues they faced in Game 1 before heading into Game 2.