Basketball Intelligence For 6/4/24
Today's Best NBA Reporting And Analysis
Basketball Intelligence is excited to announce our inaugural NBA Finals Points contest! Paying subscribers can enter ONE guess at the combined total number of points scored by BOTH teams across the NBA Finals. If someone gets the guess exactly right, they’ll receive a LIFETIME subscription to BI! If no one gets it exactly right, the closest guess will receive a free YEAR of BI. Show off your basketball acumen and submit a response today! Details follow below for our paying subscribers! If you’re a free subscriber, don’t stress, there is still time to become a paying subscriber to submit an entry!”
THE PLAYOFFS
BOS-DAL
The Four Biggest Tactical Questions of the 2024 NBA Finals
Michael Pina, The Ringer
Predicting the Finals
David Thorpe, True Hoop
The Mavs won’t come close to manufacturing the speed of the Pacers’ offense in either the full court or the half court. Hero ball is much easier to guard, even if we’re talking Luka and Kyrie, two of the greatest shotmakers of all time. Keeping those stars from going supernova will be the Celtics’ primary objective, a mission eased somewhat by the Mavs’ simple offensive structure. Unlike the Pacers’ random Blur Ball, the Celtics should have a good idea what’s coming. The Mavs are more like George Foreman—the haymakers are powerful but not sneaky.
How this intriguing NBA Finals matchup will be won on the court
Tim Cato, Jay King, Jared Weiss, The Athletic
Finals Preview on the Mavericks defense
Gibson Pyper, Half Court Hoops
Film Study: How will the Celtics defend Luka ?
John Schuhmann, NBA.com
Potential defensive matchups for Doncic
Adam Taylor, The Celtics Chronicles
4 Tactical Questions That Determine The Winner Of The 2024 NBA Finals
Esfandiar Bahareni, Forbes
How Luka Dončić, Kyrie Irving are successfully attacking defenses in the pick-and-roll
Mo Dakhil, The Athletic
Finals preview: X-factors, matchups and predictions
Andrew Callahan/Zack Cox, Boston Herald
24 key stats ahead of 2024 NBA Finals
John Schuhmann, NBA.com
The twists and turns that led Jrue Holiday back to the Finals
Brian Windhorst, ESPN
Dereck Lively’s story is worth rooting for
Isaac Appelt, Mavs Moneyball
The rookie center has transformed Dallas’ defense and offense in a way few people could’ve imagined when he was drafted No. 12 overall in last year’s NBA Draft.
Celtics have followed ‘craziness’ of Joe Mazzulla’s coaching style straight to the NBA Finals
Kyle Hightower, AP
Finals’ 15 best players ranked
Ricky O’Donnell, SBNation
Five questions for Mike Breen
Chad Finn, Boston Globe
Ranking top players through conference finals
Neil Payne, ESPN
Biggest surprises of 2024 NBA playoffs
Colin Ward-Henninger, CBS Sports
Links to Draft-related, Team-specific and Leaguewide stories follow for paid subscribers. Also, the link to submit an entry in our playoff total point contest follows at the bottom of today’s newsletter.