FULL REACTION: Celtics beat the Mavericks in Game 1 of the NBA Finals 👀 Luka had only 1 AST 😳

Luka had just one assist in this game. That's something that he talked about afterwards. Mostly play one-on-one, and he's had a lot of help, so that's why. Luka, you've obviously been here before, you know, down 0-1 in a series. What do you remember about, you know, the first round and the second round? What the next day was like for you guys? What did it look like? What did it feel like? I don't remember. Just, you lose or you win. First or fourth, we gotta focus on the next game. Does that give you guys confidence, though? Of course. You want me to say we have no confidence? I just want to hear you say it. You know, it's good for our stories. Of course. Luka, obviously, Chris Dobbs had a really big first half. Just from what you remember playing with him, why was he so impactful out there, just taking advantage of pretty much every matchup he had? Yeah, I mean, he was great for them. He was knocking out shots. He was blocking shots. So, he was really, really huge for them on both ends of the floor. Tansy, right in the front. What kind of problems does the Celtics' five-out offense present for you guys on defense? Their spacing is great, and they have a lot of shooters. So, I think we gotta do a better job taking those three away. Luka, for you guys as a team, defensively, what needs to change? I mean, you guys have been so good throughout these playoffs. What was different tonight? What did they do to get you guys off your front foot? Just like I said, right now, we gotta take those threes away. And that's what hurts us the most. This isn't on the graphic. I just wanna mention it before I get to this. 282 games Luka's played in his career, regular season and playoffs. This is the first time that he didn't have double-digit assists, just one. He did plenty of good things in game one, 30 and 10. The rest of the starters not able to match his productivity, particularly from beyond the arc, just one of 10 from there. Kyrie 0-4-5 in his first game back in Boston in the post-season here at this finals series. Boston jumps Dallas up 17 after the first day cruise to a game one victory. They hadn't had Kristaps Porzingis in 38 days, and he delivered with 20, some huge and impactful blocks. Felt like every bucket he landed was like a punch in a fight. And he helped propel Boston to the win. Here's coach Mazzullo afterwards. To that start he did in the first half. Yeah, just sort of gave us the best chance to win. And he was great on both ends of the floor, defensive execution, game plan, fighting for a spot in the offensive end, being physical and making plays on both ends of the floor. So I thought he played great. And, you know, that's the KP that helped us get to where we are today. What did you see from Jason and the pressure he kind of drew defensively and how he played around that? Yeah, just poise. They have a great defensive system, great defensive team, throw a bunch of stuff at you, different spacings, different coverages. And the poise to just figure it out, make the right play is going to be the most important thing. I thought he had that, you know, throughout the game. Dave over here on the left side. Mavs were able to cut it to eight in the third quarter. You guys respond with a 14-0 run and Chris Tops is making plays during that run as well. Just how big was that moment and for him to continue his impact after that hot start? Yeah, game management is going to be important. This is a great team. They have a tendency to go on great runs and, you know, that's going to happen. And so you have to be able to manage those with poise and execution, know why those runs are being made and quickly put a stop to them with high level execution. So KP was a huge part of that, that run. But I thought I liked the way we handled their run because that's going to happen. You're not going to stop that. You just have to have the poise and the toughness to work through it. I thought our guys did that. Tim Legler, ladies and gentlemen, we've been waiting all week to get to this one and we got the touchscreen to break things down, but let's start in the beginning. So 17-15 game, it was like 5.50 to go. They hit a three and here we go. With five minutes of game time later, it's a 27-point lead. What happened in that stretch? Boston was getting all kinds of switches all over the floor and they were just absolutely beating whatever was in front of them. And the weak side help was not good enough. One of the things we've loved about Dallas through this stretch was their weak side defense, protection at the rim. It just wasn't there. Porzingis got going early with some of these mid-range jumpers, but this is the stuff I'm talking about, where you just are putting your head down, winning your matchup, getting to the rim, nobody offering resistance. And by this point now, he's kind of rolling, but here's another one. Just bully Luka Doncic, get to your spot, go up, power through, very little resistance. This obviously was a highlight play in the first half, splitting those two defenders and then flushing at the rim. One more time, Tatum here just catches, gets the switch with Kyrie, turns out of that. The reaction is late. Boston's aggressiveness and their confidence level that every matchup in front of them was a favorable one for them. They took advantage of it. You can't put a measure on what Chris Tapps Porzingis gave them with his jolt of electricity after not seeing him so long to come out, have that kind of an impact, man. What that did to that building, what it did to their team, it destabilized Dallas. I don't think they were prepared for what Chris Tapps Porzingis presented for them in the challenge in that first half. And we wondered, would Dallas have some sort of an answer? Would they throw a combination of their own? And they did. And it gets to an eight-point game and you said to me up in the room upstairs, you're like, well, let's see what happens now, right? You spend so much energy in the comeback, you get stops and you get makes. Is that going to happen? Is that going to sustain itself? What did Boston do when it got to that kind of frightening eight-point margin in the third to ultimately put this to bed? Luka hits the three, right? Nods a little bit, has a little nod. And you're thinking like, oh, Luka's feeling it right now. Like now this is when they're a problem at one possession game. It was out of that timeout when they got back to what their strength is, which is using penetration to create chases at the three-point line. And that's really what they did to kind of close this out. And this is what they were doing the whole time, Scott. They're just hunting who they want. Here's Luka. You're going to go and have Tatum set this screen right here and then Tatum's going to peel out because you want ultimately Luka operating here against Jalen Brown. And that's what they get. And Luka actually does a decent job initially. Like he slides his feet. He kind of offers some resistance. Watch Jalen Brown's determination. He kind of gets tied up here, but then he continues to go. And the fact that Kyrie Irving can't help off the corner means it's simple math. If you can get into the paint and bring somebody from the weak side to help, you've got three on two on the weak side. And that's basically what happens right here. You're going to get finally that backline defender has to come. And now you're going to see because Horford's on the baseline, that means that Cleave has got to pinch down. And now again, do the math. You got two shooters on the weak side. You got one defender to try to figure this out. Jalen Brown's going to make the kick out. You get the chase from the top. One more swing. It's wide with three. This is Boston at their best. Two feet in the rim before they start getting the three. Here again, one more example. Another switch, Jalen Brown. Obviously this is not the matchup you want. If you're Dallas, you got Maxie Cleaver on the island against Jalen Brown. Now here's what is important, Scott. If they're going to do these switches, very, very important. Cleaver has to be aware. Like this is where all of the activity is. Very, very important defensively. Jump on that right hand and force him back to his left into the traffic. He doesn't do that. He gets beat to the opposite side. And what that means is you got two shooters over here. These guys aren't leaving. So now Jalen Brown is downhill. You're going to force this reaction from the backline defender to come over to get in front. And of course you got a wide open three here. And this is unfortunate for Dallas' breakdown because you're down to three seconds on the clock when Brown wins this matchup. But again, it always gets back to the same thing on this night, which is Dallas' inability to keep the ball in front of them in any sort of one-on-one coverage because of the versatility of Boston's players, the number of switches that they were getting. Dallas just really was destabilized from the beginning defensively. This was not the defense that we saw Dallas play for the last three months of the season. Give Boston a lot of credit. This was a dominant performance on both ends of the floor. We welcome Kristaps Porzingis now to the show. Hey, it's Scott Van Pelt. Thank you very much for taking a moment. In our business, Kristaps, we're supposed to have a better question than how does something feel. But when you haven't played in 38 days and you've just contributed in such a meaningful game in such a meaningful way, I'm just interested in physically and then emotionally sort of what you're feeling right now. Hey, Scott. Yeah, no, it's a bit of a relief, right? Back on the court, healthy, back with my guys. It was tough to sit out. I'm not gonna lie. It was very tough, but I was connected with the team, staying as engaged as I could, even though I'm not playing. And tonight I finally got the chance to be back out there and get our first win here in finals, and it feels good. I just was talking with Tim about that first quarter. It went from a two-point game to a 27-point game in five minutes of game time. You were in the middle of a ton of it. What do you remember, Kristaps, about your role in that avalanche that really, in many ways, kind of won this game in the first quarter? You know what? Good question. I was so in the moment, I don't even know. Like, I was just playing basketball, getting to my spot, teammates fighting me, letting it fly, and ball was going in. It was rolling. The crowd was absolutely bananas, and we just had so much fun. And of course, you know, there's ups and downs in a game, and they made their run, but we stayed even-keeled. We responded, and that's it, took care of business. It's not that I don't believe you, but when you haven't played in 38 days, and then you get in there, and you go wild the way you do, I mean, maybe, is it all just kind of a blur? I mean, it's just hard to process what's happening. Oh, did you? I can't hear anything. You got me? Cut off. Yeah, I hear you now. Okay, cool. I just wanna make sure. You got me, Kristaps? Yeah. Oh, okay, cool. I was just saying that when you haven't played in as long as you haven't played, and then the ball does start going in, and you're pulling from 29 feet, is it sort of a blur? I mean, you just kind of go blank? Yeah, in a way. I mean, I was so into the moment, that moment, the crowd. Even from the moment that I just, I was walking out to warm up. I was getting goosebumps. The crowd, the support that I had behind me, it was unbelievable, and everything just clicked, and I was getting to my spots, and then that time off kind of like, that was that moment for me to just be back and put a mark on the game. When did you know that you could go? I mean, at what point in this break did you start feeling like, all right, I'm me again? Cut off again. One more time. Hello, hello. Can't hear you. Oh, this is awesome. Oh, this is good times. I'm asking, at what point in this break did you start to feel physically like yourself again? I would say I probably felt the best from the beginning of the game, right? I was still fresh. Obviously, month and a half without playing, it's tough to jump and have the same conditioning as if you were playing all these rounds and all these games, right? So I'm still getting there, and obviously, the medical staff is still being cautious with me coming back and playing these high-intensity games, but throughout the game, I felt good, and obviously, some moments, you run out of gas a little bit, but there's timeouts and subs, obviously quicker subs than usual for me, so it was good. We managed it well, and as I said, we got the job done. I'm really, I'm risking it to ask another question because you might not be able to hear me again, but I mean, you've been an excellent. I hear you now. All right, you've been an excellent player, and you've contributed significantly, and you've had bigger scoring nights, but as you drive home from this night, first night in the finals, and you impact the game on both ends of the floor in the way you did, how do you make sense of this night, like what you just did in the NBA finals? You know what? I try to like not, you know, not to get too high. Obviously, it's a nice like relief to be back out there playing, have a good game, and win at home, but we have still a lot of work to do. You know, these guys will not go away. These are the NBA finals, and they're gonna keep throwing punches and coming for us, and we're gonna come for them. Same way we did tonight, and again, tomorrow and the day after until we get the job done. Well, thank you so much for your patience with our audio issues, and thanks for throwing on the headset. Congratulations on a remarkable night tonight, and best of luck the rest of the way, all right? Yes, sir. Thank you, guys. Thanks. You got it. Christophe Sporzingas, tremendous performance tonight as he's the fifth player since blocks were first tracked in 1973-74 to have 20 points and three blocks off the bench in an NBA finals game. First to do it since Kevin McHale in 84 against the Lakers. That series ended with a banner for Boston in seven games. On the other side, Jason Kidd imploring his guys not to lose faith just one game. We're third. How did we do? We won the third, okay? How did we do in the fourth? Does anybody know? We won the fourth. No, we won the fourth, right? Do you understand that? So we gotta build on it, right? We got great looks, our trust. When we pop, right, when we're wide open, L throws it to you, what can you do? Catch and shoot, right? When you're wide open, let it fly. Does anybody come out of the game if you don't let it fly, right? You come out if you don't let it fly, but you gotta catch and shoot. Shoot with confidence. You make it or you miss it, and guess what? You run back no matter what on defense. It's only game one. It's a series. Remember that, okay? It is a series. The Celtics were significant favorites before this thing started. And as you understand, the odds grow with them taking game one. You see the odds for game two, and you can get a little bit of get back, quite a bit of get back, by the way, if you think Boston's gonna win in a sweep. That would seem like a steep hill to climb. Dallas is gonna fight back in this series, you have to believe. Six for 19-9 for Kyrie Irving. His thoughts after the Mavs dropped game one of the NBA Finals. Kyrie, obviously with you and Luka, you guys have two of the best one-on-one players in the world, but the ball wasn't moving tonight. How do you avoid, with the way that the Celtics play defensively, you know, falling into kind of the trap of relying on isolation and becoming stagnant? I wouldn't, I don't necessarily agree that it's a trap, you know, that they wanna set us. I think that they really rely on their great defensive ball pressure, their one-on-one defenders, and they funnel us into certain areas. I mean, you know, even as I say that, that they're relying on the one-on-one, every time I gotta iso, there's almost two, three people waiting for me to get in there. So I gotta catch the ball in a live dribble and just be aware of my opportunities. It's uncharacteristic for us to have only nine assists. The ball's gotta move a little bit more. And again, that starts with me just being able to push the pace, get us some easy opportunities and just adjust to what they're throwing at us. So it's a fun series. You know, it was fun just, you know, going into the game, it's still gonna be fun, but there's gonna be a level of chess that still has to be played. And, you know, game one was just about adjustments. We obviously wanted to win this basketball game, gave ourselves a chance in the second half when we were down by eight, and they brought it up to 16 and it got up to 22 when we called the timeout. So just gonna be replaying some of these possessions, but, you know, at the same time, look at some of the positives that we can carry on to game two. Here at the front, Mike. Kyrie, Mike Curtis, Dallas Morning News. You mentioned the environment. How did that either meet or kind of exceed your expectations? And how did it affect you tonight? No, I mean, it's basketball at the end of the day. You know, being in this environment, you know, I'm used to it at this point. You know, early in my career, there was a different relationship that I had with Boston, just being able to come here, be settled with a veteran group. Now I'm here as the veteran. Over the past few years, just experiencing the playoffs here, even regular season, it's been the same thing. I thought it was gonna be a little louder in here, but I'm expecting the same things going into game two. Crowd trying to get me out of my element, my teammates out of my element. But again, the energy's gotta be focused towards the game. Felt like I had a lot of great looks. They hit back rim or, you know, they were just a little left or right. So I just gotta stay confident and stay poised throughout this, man. This is the best time of the year to be playing. It's only two teams left. Let's put it in perspective. You know, so the environment's gonna be what it is, but my focus is on our game plan and making sure my guys feel confident and I feel confident and continue to shoot great shots. Kyrie has been brilliant throughout this postseason run. This was the worst game he's had in this postseason. They were outscored by 19 when he was on the floor, 0 for 5 from 3, 6 of 19 in total. His second worst in a game this postseason. Tim Legler is with us. Legs, I'm looking at the box score. You're doing the same thing. I say assists are 23 to 9, Boston. I say threes are 16 to 7, Boston. Of those two, which is more troubling for them, for Dallas tonight and has to change in game two? They're actually connected. Dallas's assist numbers are so low because of how anemic they were at the three-point line. That's a low number to take, 27 for that team, making seven and a couple of those were late in the game. So that to me is where they're connected offensively to Boston in that way. They're gonna get high assist volumes when they make it three-point shots. They didn't get a lot. They didn't make the ones that they did get. Certainly not enough. I think J.J. made this point after the game. I do think it is a strategic option for Boston to try to take away those corner kickout threes by Luka with the late pass once he gets guys to converge on him. The late find. The late find, that's right. That's your favorite thing, right? The late find. He's the master at it and waiting for guys to converge on him in the paint, hitting the corner kickout. They weren't really leaving that guy. And so as a result, I think Luka got in there a couple times in the first half, several times, where he wasn't thinking about scoring because he was waiting for the natural reaction of the defense and knowing that's normally a kickout. That might be a different approach for Luka now going into the game. He might need 40 and that might mean those five or six balls that he didn't shoot because he was waiting for that help that never came. Maybe now, see Luka going in there with a different intention, understanding, this is how you're gonna play me, then I'm gonna go ahead because I'm capable of scoring on any of these guys that are in front of him, but he wants to have it both ways and Boston didn't really allow him to do that tonight. It's clearly a point of emphasis for Boston defensively to try to limit that. But there's also, like Kyrie just talked about, there's also just some missing of open shots. I mean, do you place more sort of weight on what Boston did as opposed to just Dallas missing? I think I'm really good about watching the game and knowing the difference between the two. That's not what I saw tonight. This was affected by the Boston Celtics. Got it. The frenzy, the energy that they played with was frenetic on that end of the floor the entire first half. And we talked about this at the beginning of the game. You said, wow, that's Kyrie's first touch. Felt like we were five, six minutes into the game before he had anything remotely looking like a scoring opportunity. That's going to be different in game two. Kyrie, one thing I'll say about him, he is not going to string together typically back-to-back poor scoring nights when his team needs to have it. So I think Kyrie is a guy that I expect to have a pretty good response in game two. We got to go, and you know when I say this, I mean it, we got a sentence. You liked Dallas before. You still like him? I still like him, yeah. But this was definitely a dominant performance by Boston. Alan Brown asked about the off-season additions, Porzingis and Drew Holiday. They were pretty good in this one, weren't they? Great additions between Chris Epps and Drew. And any given night, it could be any of us, you know. And Chris Epps had a monster game for us. Just his presence, shooting the ball, and him being able to attack those switches and mismatches. He made them pay every time, and that's what we need going forward in the series. Chris Epps was big. But those other guys, Derek White, Drew Holiday, JT, all can get going at any point in time. So that's the beauty of our team. We just got to, you know, every game has its own story. We just got to stay ready, stay composed, and take it one game at a time. Brian Wendhorst back with us. We don't have the podcast extended playroom that we had last night when we emptied the bag. But this is kind of what you and I were talking about last night, right? Like, Boston was demonstrably the best team all year, and I don't know why people kind of try to talk themselves out of it. They just got depth, they've got options. Jalen Brown is another one of their star players on a night where Porzingis shines, and Tatum didn't have to do a lot. What caught your eye about Brown's contribution? He was, it was such a star game from him. And what I mean by that is just all the different ways he impacted the game. He gets three steals, two of them are pick sixes. He has three block shots. One of them is that awesome one at the rim. He is extremely efficient offensively. He takes 12 shots, scores 22 points, did miss some free throws, which as Celtics fans will tell you is a bit of a thorn in their side at times. Only had two turnovers. Like, what a perfect performance that he gave. He takes on the responsibility of guarding Luka out of the gates in the game as a primary defender. Like, this is exactly the type of game you need from a guy like Jalen Brown. The way the Celtics are built, Scott, they're not, I'm not going to say it never happens, but they're not going to have games where their star players score 40 points. They're going to have games where they get great contributions up and down the lineup. Jalen Brown did that exactly. I'm telling you, he plays a few more of these games. They're going to end up with the trophy at the end of this. Yeah, and all the idiots last June that said you can't give them the money and have to part ways, I just would always say, yeah. And how do you get better when you do that? He's still there, and there are three wins away from their 18th banner. Defensively, the point of emphasis from Boston tonight, in your estimation, was what? So Legs just talked about it a little bit. He's talking about how keeping Luka's teammates from getting going was so important. The number that everyone's going to focus on is that he had one assist, and that is obviously an outlier amongst outliers. He's never had a game where he's played this many minutes and had just one assist. And his teammates missing threes, especially, contributed to that. But that's not the number I'm focused on. The number I'm focused on is that the Celtics only allowed his teammates to have six chances for assists from Luka. They were one of six. That six number, I'm going to circle it, underline it, and highlight it. That is a huge victory for Boston. Because we talked last night, that incredible stat that his teammates were shooting 57% of his passes. You're better off just letting him shoot, because he doesn't shoot 57%. You're better off letting him shoot every time down the court. They had to deal with that number. Now, obviously, Kyrie missed some shots. Obviously, there were some looks that didn't go down. That's not going to happen again. But they have to be thrilled with their game plan discipline and the way they were able to successfully handle Luka without sending any double teams and really almost never sending help so that they could stay on those teammates. Honestly, I don't think they care if Luka scores 30 in a game. I don't think they care if he scores 35 or even 40, as long as it's not super efficient. That is the formula that Celtics need to keep following if they're going to win this thing. And they've got to be thrilled that that guy we talked about last night that was a total question mark for Zingas was in. Man, he was an exclamation mark in that first quarter, just remarkable on both ends of the floor. He couldn't stop from smiling. No. You see that, Scott? Well, he came out with us. He worked his whole life. He lost the audio feed. But I think he would have stayed and talked until 2 in the morning. Well, wouldn't you? Please tell us about it. Please, Kristaps, tell us about the greatest moment of your career that you just had. I think he would have loved to talk with you. He couldn't stop himself from smiling. And I don't know whose decision it was to bring him off the bench. For all I know, they had 15 meetings. They brought in statistical and analysis and put it through AI. However, they decided to bring him off the bench. And when they brought him in the game, it was absolutely perfect. It was an absolutely inspired choice. And that move made it all happen for the Celtics early in the game. Brian Wenthorst from Boston, thank you so much for your time, as always. Appreciate you. Thanks, Scott.