The Dallas Mavericks are sizable underdogs in the 2024 NBA Finals against the Boston Celtics, but there are a lot of public bettors that believe Dallas will take this series.
If you also believe that’s the case, betting on a Mavs player to win Finals MVP is a great way to cash in on some favorable odds since Celtics All-NBA forward Jayson Tatum is the odds on favorite in this market.
Luka Doncic is No. 2 on the list – clearly the top Mavs player entering this series – but there are two dark horses that I think are worth considering if you want to place a small wager on them to win NBA Finals MVP.
There is Doncic, and then there is a massive gap between the rest of the Mavs in this market – and for good reason.
The 2023-24 regular season MVP finalist leads the playoffs in total points, rebounds, assists, steals and 3-pointers made, recording six triple-doubles in 17 games.
Doncic has a massive usage rate, and he looked to bet getting over his knee and ankle injuries – at least when it comes to his scoring – in the Western Conference Finals, scoring 32 or more points in each of Dallas’ four wins.
Jrue Holiday will be a tough and likely matchup for Doncic, but let’s not forget that Luka nearly averaged a triple double in the regular season while putting up 33.9 points per game. Dallas will need him to be otherworldly to win this series, and if he is, he’s going to win Finals MVP.
Kyrie Irving (+2000)
Has there been a bigger revenge series in recent memory than this one for Kyrie Irving?
A former Celtic, Irving has a chance to bury his former team in the Finals, and he is the clear-cut No. 2 option to win Finals MVP on the Mavericks. In fact, no player has shorter than +29000 odds on Dallas after Doncic and Irving.
Kyrie’s scoring would likely be his calling card to propel him in this market, but asking him to outplay Doncic is a tough task, and if he does, doesn’t that put Dallas in a tough spot to win the series?
The Mavs need both of their stars to be great in this series, and if that’s the case, the betting odds suggest Doncic is the clear favorite here. Kyrie could be worth a sprinkle, but his path to a Finals MVP is a little murky outside of him scoring at an all-time rate.
Dereck Lively II (+50000)
The longest of longshots, rookie Dereck Lively II is second on the Mavericks in plus/minus this postseason, and he’s made a massive impact on the defensive end of the floor.
Could Lively’s defense and rebounding be enough to win this award?
It’s highly unlikely, but he’s the one Mavs role player I’d consider given his positive impact on a game-to-game basis for the Mavs. Plus, if Lively wins the matchup with Kristaps Porzingis (Daniel Gafford will start for Dallas but Lively will probably close) late in games, it could be crucial to Dallas pulling off an upset.
Don’t break the bank betting on him, but for the sake of this exercise, he’d be my No. 3 choice.
Odds refresh periodically and are subject to change.
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Early in the fourth quarter it looked like Boston was going to cruise to a 3–0 series lead. A Derrick White three staked the Celtics to a 21-point lead with 11 minutes to play. The three-point line was hot and the Mavericks looked finished. Then P.J. Washington hit a three. Then Luka Doncic hit a layup. Then Dereck Lively II tipped in a miss. A 12–0 run cut the lead to nine with eight minutes to play. A 20–2 run made it a one-possession game with six minutes to play.
Doncic was hot. Kyrie Irving was rolling. Dallas had life.
With 4:38 to play, Doncic picked up his fifth personal foul. Bad. Fewer than 30 seconds later, he picked up his sixth. Worse. Dallas, faced with trying to complete the comeback with its All-NBA guard on the bench, crumbled. An Irving jumper briefly cut the lead to one but Boston quickly pushed it back up to three, then six, then eight. And that was your ball game.
“We had a good chance,” Doncic said. “We were close. Just didn’t get it. I wish I was out there.”
Said Jayson Tatum, “The game of basketball is about runs, and this is at the highest level. You know, it’s the best team in the West at this point. They are going to make shots. They are going to go on a run, and it’s just all about how do you respond.”
When Dallas surged to an early 13-point first-quarter lead, there was Tatum, scoring 20 of his 31 points in the first half to keep the game close. When Boston needed buckets down the stretch, there was Jaylen Brown, who scored 24 of his 30 in the second half, including nine in the fourth quarter.
It wasn’t a flawless game. Tatum struggled with his shot, finishing 11-for-26. Brown was 2-for-9 from three-point range. But they refused to get discouraged. It was Tatum’s driving dunk in traffic that pushed the Celtics’ lead to six late in the fourth quarter. It was Brown’s 21-footer that put the game away. For just the second time in Celtics history, two players scored at least 30 points in a Finals game. And when the final buzzer sounded, the two stars embraced near center court.
“Just you know showing the emotions of the game,” Tatum said. “Two guys that were excited, tired, that, you know, after the game. We’re not necessarily saying like, ‘One more,’ or anything like that. We are just saying, ‘However long it takes.’ Nobody is relaxed. Nobody is satisfied. Just at that moment, you know, just told him I was proud of him and he said the same thing. That we’ve got to keep fighting. We can’t relax.”
Role players have become the story of this series. For Boston, the first two games were dominated by Kristaps Porzingis, who returned from a 38-day absence to help power Boston to a 2–0 series lead. In Game 3, with Porzinigis out, it was White (16 points) and Sam Hauser (nine) making shots. Al Horford stretching out for 37 minutes. Xavier Tillman, playing his first minutes of this series, finishing a +9 in 11 minutes.
“I just think that top to bottom, we trust everybody, and we just compete at a high level,” White said. “Obviously, they are great players, and it’s a challenge but [it’s] just consistently being in the right position and just competing.”
Tillman came up big in Game 3, playing his first minutes of the Finals. / Peter Casey-USA TODAY Sports
On Dallas’s side, it was more of the same. Washington chipped in nine points during Dallas’s fourth-quarter comeback but finished with 12 overall. Derrick Jones Jr. was a non-factor. Maxi Kleber, too. Jason Kidd dusted off Tim Hardaway Jr. for 20 minutes. Hardaway finished 0-for-5. In the first half, Kidd’s rotation went 11 deep.
“We were trying to find someone to come off the bench and give us a spark,” Kidd said. “It doesn’t always have to be someone making a shot. I thought the guys that played tonight helped us get the lead or get back into the game.
“When you look at some of the guys who played, we got good looks, some of them made them, some of them didn’t. I thought the group that played, once that third quarter got away from us, it just showed the group kept playing.”
In the conference playoffs, Luke Kornet gobbled up the bulk of the non-Porzingis minutes. In Game 3, Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla went with Tillman, in part because of the ex-Memphis Grizzlies forward’s experience against the Mavericks. Tillman responded by knocking down a corner three in the third quarter and swatting away two shots.
“Big shout out to X,” White said. “To not be in the rotation but to stay locked in and he gives us big-time minutes. He just does a little bit of everything out there. Then he guarded his ass off and hit a big shot and rebounds, and he just did a little bit of everything for us. Credit to him. Great, great teammate, great guy, and he was big for us.”
The statistics say no. Of the 156 teams that have trailed 3–0 in an NBA playoff series, zero have come back to win it. The more pressing concern is if Dallas can avoid a sweep. Doncic struck an optimistic tone at his postgame news conference. “Being down 21 in the third game and then coming back was a really positive thing for us,” he said. And the Mavs did get a breakout game from Irving (35 points). But as talented as Doncic and Irving are, they are not getting enough help. And a Celtics team that nearly completed a 3–0 comeback last season isn’t sounding like one ready to let this one slip away.
“You have to expect the expected,” Mazzulla said. “You’ve got to understand we are just as vulnerable if not more vulnerable than they are. And we have to play that way. So as long as we have that mindset, and when you understand that you’re vulnerable and your back’s against the wall, you’ve got to fight. And so that’s the mindset that we have to have.”
Returning to the Boston lineup for the first time in more than five weeks, Porzingis was outstanding, finishing Game 1 with 20 points (on 8 for 13 shooting), six rebounds and three blocks. Coming off the bench for the first time this season, Porzingis made an immediate impact, racking up 11 points in the first seven minutes, helping the Celtics build a 37–20 lead.
“Even if I have time off, I can jump right back in and I feel the same way,” Porzingis said. “I get to my spots, so whether it’s playoffs, regular season or whatever, I know how to do this. That’s it, just having that confidence, going out there whatever, first round or Finals, just going out there with full confidence and giving what I have to the team.”
As solid as Boston was during the conference playoffs—and the Celtics lost just one game after Porzingis went out in the first round with a calf injury—Porzingis’s return clearly makes Boston measurably better. Porzingis torched the Mavericks offensively, exploiting switches and forcing Dallas’s bigs to chase him beyond the three-point line. Defensively, Porzingis was a menace; the shots he didn’t block he contested and on screens he all but dared the Mavs wing players to take the ball to the rim.
“He was great for them,” Mavericks star guard Luka Doncic said. “He was knocking down shots. He was blocking shots. So he was really, really huge for them on both ends of the floor.”
As thrilled as the Celtics were to get Porzingis back, the 7’2” big man was happier to be there. He received a loud ovation when he came out to warm up hours before the game. And the crowd exploded when Porzingis popped up on the JumboTron making the walk down the back hallway and onto the floor.
“Getting that kind of support was unreal,” Porzingis said. “The adrenaline was pumping through my veins and that definitely helped. Obviously, it wasn’t ideal that I was out for such a long time, but I did everything I could to prepare mentally for this moment coming back. And it paid off and we got the job done tonight and had a good game and [I’m] happy about the result.”
Entering this series, the Celtics believed they were uniquely equipped to defend Doncic. They had two All-Defensive Team members (Jrue Holiday and Derrick White) and Jaylen Brown, who probably deserved to be on one. Doncic got his points (30 on 12 for 26 shooting) but finished the game with one assist, his lowest total of the season. The lobs that powered Dallas’s offense in the conference finals? Gone. The corner threes? Taken away. The Mavericks’ nine assists were their lowest total of the season.
“They did a great job defending, making it tough on us,” Dallas head coach Jason Kidd said. “We had some good looks that didn’t go down. We’ve got to move the ball. The ball just stuck too much.”
Said Boston head coach Joe Mazzulla, “I thought our defensive mindset, our defensive execution, our defensive game plan, our positioning, we had the right intentions and I thought we played really physical, for the most part, defending without fouling.”
Doncic finished with 30 points but had only one assist, his lowest total of the season. / David Butler II-USA TODAY Sports
Credit Brown, who glued himself to Doncic for most of his 37 minutes. Brown has the size and strength to stay in front of Doncic and the discipline not to bite on any of his pump-fakes. By not sending double teams, Boston shut down the rest of the Dallas offense; when Kidd waved the white flag in the fourth quarter, only two other Mavericks (Kyrie Irving and P.J. Washington) had scored in double figures and neither had more than 14 points.
“What you saw tonight is kind of the challenge he took for himself coming into the year,” Mazzulla said. “Not wanting to be defined by one thing. Wanting to make plays. Wanting to be a well-rounded player and get better and better. So his spacing, his ball movement, his defense on ball and off ball.”
The much-talked-about hostility from the TD Garden crowd toward Irving never materialized; it’s tough to get too fired up when your team spent most of the game leading by double digits. Irving’s return to Boston was a dismal one: 12 points (on 6 for 19 shooting), two assists and three turnovers. While Irving had to contend with Holiday most of the night, the ex–All-Star missed a lot of open looks, including several beyond the three-point line and three in the third quarter, when Dallas briefly cut the lead to single digits.
“They really rely on their great defensive ball pressure and one-on-one defenders,” Irving said. “They funnel us into certain areas. Even as I say that, that they are relying on the one-on-one, every time I got an iso, there’s almost two, three people waiting for me to get in there. I have to catch the ball on a live dribble and just be aware of my opportunities.”
The Celtics have been burying opponents in three-pointers all season, finishing first in the league in attempts (42.5 per game) and second in percentage (38.8%). In Game 1, the Celtics were 7 for 15 from three-point range in the first quarter, helping build the double-digit lead they wouldn’t surrender.
Hauser had a rough conference finals, connecting on 12.5% of his shots and making just one three in a four-game sweep of the Indiana Pacers. He shook that off in Game 1, collecting eight points and making both of his three-point attempts. When Dallas went Hauser-hunting in the first half, he responded, locking up Doncic on two possessions and forcing Irving into a missed three.
Hauser shook off a rough conference finals to post a solid outing in Game 1 of the Finals. / David Butler II-USA TODAY Sports
NBA commissioner Adam Silver didn’t provide one at his annual pre-Finals news conference. Silver declined to comment on reports the NBA had agreed to the framework of deals with ESPN, NBC and Amazon while passing on a specific question about whether or not Warner Bros. Discovery—the parent company for longtime NBA broadcast partner Turner—had the right to match any deal.
“It’s complicated for several reasons,” Silver said. “One is the advent of new platforms, particularly streaming, and the interest of streaming companies, and then the traditional media companies also carrying our games on streaming platforms. It’s complicated with multiple partners all seeking similar assets. In many cases, just figuring out the right way to balance those games as they go to different partners.
“We tend to do long-term deals. We think that’s good for the stability of the league, but it means, to a certain extent, you’re trying to predict the future, which is, of course, impossible. So part of it is a bet on the partners that we will ultimately align with and their ability also to adjust with the times and their willingness to continue to invest in media and also become global, which is very important to the league as well.”
The first round of the 2024 NBA postseason had some great matchups, and things will only get better from here on out. Saturday marked the start of the second round of the playoffs, when true contenders battle against one another in an effort to reach the final four of their conference. Iron sharpens iron, after all, and this year's slate of Round 2 contests look pretty great across the board.
Fewer games means fewer overlapping broadcast times, too. After two weeks with up to three NBA games on every night, we're more or less back to the standard of an Eastern Conference tip-off around 7 p.m. ET and a Western Conference tip-off around 10 p.m. ET.
For your viewing habit purposes, here is the full schedule for the second round of the 2024 NBA playoffs, organized by series.
NBA Playoff Schedule for Second Round
Eastern Conference
(1) Boston Celtics v. (4) Cleveland Cavaliers
• Game 1: Cavaliers vs. Celtics, Tuesday, May 7 (7 p.m. ET, TNT) • Game 2: Cavaliers vs. Celtics, Thursday, May 9 (7 p.m. ET, ESPN) • Game 3: Celtics vs. Cavaliers, Saturday, May 11 (8:30 p.m. ET, ABC) • Game 4: Celtics vs. Cavaliers, Monday, May 13 (7 p.m. ET, TNT) • Game 5 (if necessary): Cavaliers vs. Celtics, Wednesday, May 15 (TBD) • Game 6 (if necessary): Celtics vs. Cavaliers, Friday, May 17 (TBD) • Game 7 (if necessary): Cavaliers vs. Celtics, Sunday, May 19 (TBD)
(2) New York Knicks v. (3) Indiana Pacers
• Game 1: Pacers vs. Knicks, Monday, May 6 (7:30 p.m. ET, TNT) • Game 2: Pacers vs. Knicks, Wednesday, May 8 (8 p.m. ET, TNT) • Game 3: Knicks vs. Pacers, Friday, May 10 (7 p.m. ET, ESPN) • Game 4: Knicks vs. Pacers, Sunday, May 12 (3:30 p.m. ET, ABC) • Game 5 (if necessary): Pacers vs. Knicks, Tuesday, May 14 (TBD) • Game 6 (if necessary): Knicks vs. Pacers, Friday, May 17 (TBD) • Game 7 (if necessary): Pacers vs. Knicks, Sunday, May 19 (TBD)
Western Conference
(1) Oklahoma City Thunder v. (5) Dallas Mavericks
• Game 1: Mavericks vs. Thunder, Tuesday, May 7 (9:30 p.m. ET, TNT) • Game 2: Mavericks vs. Thunder, Thursday, May 9 (9:30 p.m. ET, ESPN) • Game 3: Thunder vs. Mavericks, Saturday, May 11 (3:30 p.m. ET, ABC) • Game 4: Thunder vs. Mavericks, Monday, May 13 (9:30 p.m. ET, TNT) • Game 5 (if necessary): Mavericks vs. Thunder, Wednesday, May 15 (TBD) • Game 6 (if necessary): Thunder vs. Mavericks, Saturday, May 18 (8:30 p.m. ET) • Game 7 (if necessary): Mavericks vs. Thunder, Monday, May 20 (8:30 p.m. ET)
(2) Denver Nuggets v. (3) Minnesota Timberwolves
• Game 2: Timberwolves vs. Nuggets, Monday, May 6 (10 p.m. ET, TNT) • Game 3: Nuggets vs. Timberwolves, Friday, May 10 (9:30 p.m. ET, ESPN) • Game 4: Nuggets vs. Timberwolves, Sunday, May 12 (8 p.m. ET, TNT) • Game 5 (if necessary): Timberwolves vs. Nuggets, Tuesday, May 14 (TBD) • Game 6 (if necessary): Nuggets vs. Timberwolves, Thursday, May 16 (8:30 p.m. ET) • Game 7 (if necessary): Timberwolves vs. Nuggets, Sunday, May 19 (TBD)
Key Dates for the 2024 NBA Playoffs
Aside from the all the above, the NBA postseason generally has a few key dates.
The first have already passed in the form of the play-in tournament, as well as the start of the first round. The Nuggets and Timberwolves kicked off the second round on Saturday, May 4. Below are several other key dates to look forward to.
• Conference Finals start dates: May 19-22, depending on the length of the second-round series. • NBA Finals start date: Thursday, June 6 will be Game 1 of the 2024 NBA Finals. Sunday, June 9 will be Game 2. Game 3 will take place on Wednesday, June 12. Friday, June 14 will be Game 4.
First Round Results
Below are the full results for the first round of this year's postseason.
Eastern Conference
(1) Boston Celtics def. (8) Miami Heat in 5 games
(2) New York Knicks def. (7) Philadelphia 76ers in 6 games
(4) Cleveland Cavaliers def. (5) Orlando Magic in 7 games
(6) Indiana Pacers def. (3) Milwaukee Bucks in 6 games
Western Conference
(1) Oklahoma City Thunder def. (8) New Orleans Pelicans in 4 games
(2) Denver Nuggets def. (7) Los Angeles Lakers in 5 games
(3) Minnesota Timberwolves def. (6) Phoenix Suns in 4 games
(5) Dallas Mavericks def. (4) Los Angeles Clippers in 6 games
And that's everything you need to know about the second round of the 2024 NBA playoffs. Enjoy watching!
