NBA 2024-25 Season Thread

Listen, George McGinnis ain’t walking through that door

Celtics with the least impressive 2-loss trip to the finals in history, including in like 1948 when there were 8 teams, everyone was white and american and you only had to win like one series.

Mavs/Thunder was the real finals and Dallas only won because PJ Washington turned into Caleb Martin for 3 games. GL beating the Thunders for the rest of the decade.

The 2022 Golden State Warriors aren't walking through that door.

I've heard "GL beating the Thunder for the rest of the decade" before

last decade, life comes at ya fast, we'll see

It makes me sick to my core to say this cuz I hate hate hate hate kidd rie and fat **** faced ****face but I think the mavs got this

The Celtics have looked as mid as can possibly be through the softest path to the finals I’ve seen in a long time. Even sweeping the pacers sounds way better than it looks if you actually watch the games

Soo dramatic

Why so much hate on the mavs ?

He reads like a catty gay guy

fellas, is it gay to dislike the dallas mavericks franchise? if so i got some ***** to suck i guess...

The Mavs really need to end this in 4 to get Luka some rest. The Celtics will be a slight favorite and I lean Celtics, sadly.

if they end it in 5 they still get a week off

even 6, you get 5 days off

Prime LeBron James ain’t walking through that door to entertain us in these upcoming Finals.

Define "slight favorite", because I'm seeing BOS around -220 currently. Obviously some of that is pricing the potential of this WCF dragging out or even Wolves winning, but seems an insane disparity to me. Will be all over DAL if its still that ballpark when the matchup is set

Washington can’t guard the Jays. Boston can throw four different people at Doncic

Lol Mavs hate. Luka is already an all time great and will have same # of chips as Joker by end of June

He whines more than any star.

FACTS

So bitter.

Eh. It is obviously correct that the Mavs have outperformed expectations in the playoffs, whereas the Celtics have not. And it is obviously true that the Celtics have been handed a cakewalk through the East.

But nothing in the playoffs has convinced me that either team is much different than they were in the regular season. Celtics's average margin of victory has been 10.1 ppg in the playoffs, compared to 11.4 ppg in the regular season. Mavs' average margin of victory has been 3.5 ppg in the playoffs, compared to 2.3 ppg in the regular season.

Both teams are recognizable as the teams they were in the regular season, and the Celtics are a terrible matchup for the Mavs, which makes me think that the line is about right. Gun to the head, I'd probably take the Dallas side at current odds, but I don't see much value there.

Even when the Celtics win, they don't look spectacular. They just grind teams down. They put five guys on the floor who can shoot. They shoot tons of 3s, but they don't take a bunch of tough 3s (or 2s). They don't gamble much on defense and rely more on forcing opponents to take contested shots. At the end of the game, you look at the box score, and more often than not, it just looks like the Celtics shot it a bit better than their opponent.

It isn't that much fun to watch, but it's relatively effective.

Pooh Richardson ain’t walking through that door last night, and he might not be tonight either

I think you're missing a bunch of context here. The Mavs were a much better team after the deadline. I don't know what their point differential was but I'm guessing it was a fair bit higher than +2.3. The fact that it's +3.5 in the playoffs against the schedule they've played is very impressive to me.

They've played the 2nd, 3rd and 7th best regular season teams in terms of point differential and other than Kawhi all the teams have been fully healthy. Celtics have played the 9th, 14th and 17th best regular season teams and their opponents' best player has been on the court in 4 out of 14 games.

To be fair the Celtics have done most of this without one of their best players, but there's just nothing impressive to me about occasionally blowing out a Heat team without its best player or a Cavs team without arguably its two best players. This run has made Lebron's easiest run through the east look like the...well I guess the 2024 Mavs road.

Also I know the Celtics just won a bunch of clutch games against Andrew Nembhard's Pacers, but I still don't trust their crunch time offense against a real playoff defense. I like Luka's chances of generating good/great shots down the stretch over Tatum's #KobeSystem style.

As I said, I agree that the Dallas has outperformed expectations more than the Celtics so far, and you are correct that the Mavs were better after the deadline.

I do not agree that Luka and Kyrie will be able to generate objectively easier shots down the stretch than the Celtics. In fact, that would shock me. On the plus side, Luka and Kyrie are both top 5 ITL in terms of their ability to make tough shots.

I'm not saying that Dallas is drawing dead. Far from it. I'm just saying that the line looks about right to me.

To put in perspective how inexperienced/ineffective
the Pacers were, two stats:

* The Pacers lost Games 1, 3, and 4 by a TOTAL of 11 points

* The Pacers turned the ball over in almost 25% of their clutch possessions in those 3 games...

Will Luka/Kyrie put up that kind of futility in the clutch if they're able to get there?

Yeah, that’s higher than I thought. I expected something like Celtics -160.