NBA Finals Game 2

Breakdown of the X's & O's & strategy from game 1 of the 2024 NBA Finals.

A much better showing overall for the Mavericks, but the Celtics still took care of game 2 even with a rough 3-point shooting night. After looking at the film there was actually alot to take away from this game and going forward to Dallas for games 3 & 4. I will be mentioning some of the strategy I broke down in game 1 - if you want to see that breakdown before this here is the link:

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Note: The video & written portions with gifs do have some overlap, but wanted to make sure I highlighted the most important parts with longer video edits below.

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Game 2 Notes:

Mavs went 1/5 from corner 3’s, one of them was from Luka on a set play.

13 roll man points for the Mavs compared to 0 from game 1.

Luka had 32/11/11 assists (see below - it was really like 6 assists), but he was doing everything he possibly could - no help.

Mavs not named Luka went 2/17 from 3.

Tatum is now shooting 18% on Isolation 3’s in the playoffs - 8/44.

Mazzulla has been great feeling out most of this series so far - the timeout when the Mavs cut it to 7 with 8 minutes left was great. ATO they hit a 3.

Shooting Like Its Game 7

Both teams STRUGGLED from 3, it really reminded me of a pressure packed game 7 not a game 2 where really both teams are still figuring each other out.

The Celtics again limited the corner 3 attempts on any drive and really focused even more than game 1 on helping off players like Green, DJJ & PJ Washington and not allowing corner 3 attempts.

Outside of Luka, the other Mavs were 2/17 from 3. Combine that with Kyrie only scoring 16 points on 18 shots, it makes a tough night for any team in the Finals.

I thought the Mavs did a much better job closing out and reacting to the 3’s of the Celtics when watching the game, but overall the Celtics did just miss some pretty good open looks. I clipped out the Celtics 3’s, most of these are pretty solid looks - after studying the film I think instead of thinking about the Mavericks closeouts for me the point of attack defense has to be better going forward.

Luka Counters

The Celtics gameplan hasn’t (and probably won’t) changed in games 1/2, trying to make Luka one dimensional scorer and limit as much help as possible. We can see this on the first play