Before we spend the money to book Tom Cruise for “Mission Impossible: Mavs Make History’’ let’s examine whether this thing that that Luka, Kyrie and the fellas are going to try to achieve this coming week is really so impossible. Coming back from a 3-0 deficit to win a best-of-seven series is regarded as undoable mostly because, in the NBA, it has never been done.
Let’s not forget that we used to say the same in baseball — in fact, some were saying it for more than 90 years of World Series and league championship series play — until the Boston Red Sox broke through against, of all teams, the dreaded Yankees and reversed not just a series but baseball‘s status quo. The Sox are now the team with multiple World Series wins the last 20 years, not New York. It has been done in hockey, too, so let’s acknowledge first that some day somewhere this thing is going to happen in the NBA.
Can it be the Mavs? “We have nothing to lose going to Boston,’’ Coach Jason Kidd said late Friday, after his team’s 122-84 win. He sounded almost confident.
Maybe it doesn’t count for much but, at the moment, the Mavericks have outscored the Celtics in the series. Losing games by margins of 18, 7 and 7 was overcome by Game 4’s 38-point win. Dallas led by 48 when Tim Hardaway Jr. was out there putting on a 3-point shooting clinic against what appeared to be the Celtics’ G League team. It was a hell of lot of fun for Dallas fans, who suddenly don’t want this series to end. Does it really have to be over Monday night?
The Mavericks‘ task is to win a game in Boston. Not two games (that task will come later), but one just to get the Finals back here Thursday. Just to get already uptight Coach Joe Mazzulla really, really tight. Keep in mind Dallas already has played three Game 5’s on the road this spring. They beat the Clippers in LA by 30, Oklahoma City by 12 and eliminated Minnesota by 21. As far as we can tell, Game 5 is when the Mavs are at their best. Can’t they beat Boston by a single point?
Kidd said before the game that at some point a team would be asked to “make a stand or just let go of the rope.’’ It was about the middle of the second quarter Friday when the Celtics realized they were flying home, anyway, so why not put their efforts into Game 5 because they were getting crushed. That rope was long gone. And, mind you, this happened on a night when Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving were 1-for-14 from 3-point range. It’s not as if Dallas played the perfect game to blow out the Celtics.
Before Friday night, Boston had lost just two playoff games. Both were at TD Garden where their collective mind tends to wander when they get a big lead. And the Mavericks were 7-2 on the road in the first three rounds. I don’t see why a road win now looms as impossible. The only game in which the Mavericks got manhandled in this series was Game 1 in which Kristaps Porzingis had his Willis Reed moment, coming out of the locker room to a standing ovation, playing his first game in five weeks and scoring 20 points and dominating on defense.
Porzingis has not played the last two games due to his latest injury suffered in Game 2. If he does play, it won’t be at any sort of dominant level. When he was less effective in the second game, the outcome was decided in the final minute. That can happen again. Porzingis is not the featured big man in the series now. Rookie Dereck Lively II inherited that role Friday when he had seven offensive rebounds in 22 minutes. The Celtics had four for the entire game.
Kyrie has two bad shooting nights in the Garden to atone for on Monday, and Luka is still making amends for his childish exit in Game 3. He made lots of amends Friday night and is capable of even more.
I’m not saying everyone should book flights to Boston next weekend for Game 7, but for those Game 6 tickets you’re holding, you may not have to worry about a refund. The only thing I would caution is that the Celtics…. well, they’re the Celtics. They’re pretty good. They won 64 games for a reason. They went 9-1 without Porzingis in the playoffs before Dallas showed up, so this is not unfamiliar territory for them.
”Any time we’ve had adversity this season, we’ve responded,’’ veteran center Al Horford said. “But we can say all the things we want about us. They clearly outplayed us. That’s tough but that’s the reality. They fought for their lives and they played better than us.’’
The Mavs have to maintain that “fighting for our lives” mindset while getting a few threes to fall from their two best players. If that happens, it‘s a game. Boston’s the better team but, as we have seen this series evolve, it‘s by the slightest of margins. Grabbing a road win to postpone Boston’s 18th championship celebration will be hard.
Don‘t think for a second it’s impossible.
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