The Boston Celtics and Dallas Mavericks are thoroughly modern teams, but in distinctly contrasting ways. This provides us with a Finals that should be both entertaining with a clash of styles, but also a referendum on two opposing models of team construction that haven’t traditionally produced championships. 

The Celtics are a “Strength In Numbers” descendent of the Golden State Warriors with their balance of versatile defenders and elite three-point shooting without any real weak spots on either end of the floor. But unlike those Warriors, the Celtics don’t have their own truly top tier superstar. There is no debate on who enters the series as the best player. 

The Mavericks are their heliocentric counter with Luka Doncic maximizing a well-crafted collection of role players while being supported with the NBA’s best secondary creator. The Houston Rockets came close to reaching The Finals with this model in 2018, but the aforementioned Warriors’ superteam overcame a 3-2 deficit aided by the fragility of an aging hamstring. 

The conditions around the Celtics are more limiting than the peak 2017 Warriors and perhaps even the 2015 or 2022 versions. They don’t have a MVP, let alone two, but perhaps more interestingly, they also lack the passing acumen of the Warriors. Stephen Curry and all his inherent gravity and movement was amplified by the passing and playmaking of Draymond Green, Andre Iguodala and Shaun Livingston. Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown are superstar players, but are short of the superduperstar level. They don’t amplify each other and their role players the way typical Finals MVPs do. 

Whereas the Warriors had multiple guys playing tic tac toe, the foundation of the Dallas offense comes from Doncic implacably sauntering into the middle of the paint where he will take whatever the defense yields on between a lob, passes to either corner, or a floater. Doncic is more precise, less enigmatic and more tireless than James Harden proved to be at these points in the playoffs. Doncic is the most surgical problem solver in the NBA. Whether he is adhering to a philosophy or is merely being pragmatic, Nikola Jokic is at a disadvantage when he is turned into a scorer, whereas Doncic is not at all uncomfortable taking that option if the defense presents it.

Kyrie Irving is just as dynamic, if not more so, in the secondary playmaker role occupied by Chris Paul. Doncic and Irving are in full fledged bromance mode, while Harden and Paul fermented palpable disdain for each other by the time they were eliminated by the Warriors without Kevin Durant in just their second season as teammates in Houston.

The Dallas role players are not any more equal to Doncic than the Houston ones were to Harden, but they are more empowered and dynamic. This is the key differentiator and why it has been misguided to discount the possible high-end effectiveness of heliocentrism. The way the Mavericks ameliorated their roster over these past few transaction cycles has been incredible, but it has also taken the abilities of Doncic to turn Dereck Lively and Daniel Gafford into an unstoppable two-headed rim running monster. 

Jason Kidd has empowered Doncic and Irving, while also nudging them in a few key strategic ways such as playing faster and committing themselves on defense. Kidd also has crowned this team with underdog status that speaks to their bellicose tendencies, particularly Doncic. The reverence Doncic and Irving have for Kidd surely leads them to accommodate their games in ways other coaches would be unable to achieve. 

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Near the beginning of a March game between the Denver Nuggets and Celtics, Jokic dribbled from the left arc into the paint, sent Kristaps Porzingis flying toward the baseline with his left forearm, spun and finished with a two-hand dunk. The game was atypically competitive for March with the intensity and stakes of a Finals preview, but that single moment was an indicator of how Jokic would be a particularly tough matchup for the Celtics. Michael Malone told Boston fans to “Take that L on the way out.” If Denver could survive the West, it appeared clear they would comfortably handle Boston.

If we really are in a league with more parity, then we will are also in more of a matchup dependent, rock, paper, scissors type of league. 

The Wolves beat the Nuggets and then Mavericks beat the Wolves. Maybe the Celtics will beat the Mavericks? And in an alternate sequence of the playoffs, the Nuggets would have beat the Celtics. 

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Boston very well may win a game or two by double figures, but there will be a decided edge for the Mavericks when it is close. Doncic and Irving are exuberant and uninhibited in those moments. The Celtics sometimes appear burdened by those clutch situations, particularly Tatum who seems to be scanning the entire library of Kobe Bryant’s canon in real time. Tatum has had some identifiably big games in big game moments, so maybe the sample size of the opposite are just unfair data points.

Very few of the most memorable moments of these playoffs so far have come from the Celtics. A 12-2 record is undeniably impressive, but it has felt more like a spring preseason than an unstoppable team mowing down opponents. It isn’t their fault that the moments we will romanticize have come from Jalen Brunson and the workmanlike Knicks, Anthony Edwards and the suffocating defense of the Wolves, and Doncic and the Mavericks. Most great teams reach the peak of what makes them interesting when they win, but for this era of Celtics' teams, it has been when they lose.

No team has won the championship without either a previous regular season MVP or a Finals MVP on their roster since Chauncey Billups and the Pistons in 2004. Both teams fall into that category, though not quite at that same level considering Doncic is on five straight first-team All-NBA selections and Tatum is on three straight. Billups is also the only third overall pick to win Finals MVP since Michael Jordan. There is an excellent chance the Finals MVP in this one will be a former third overall pick in Doncic, Tatum or Brown.

The Celtics have a chance to end the suspicions people have against them. They have homecourt and enter the Finals at the end of a historical season. They only have to take down the baddest player in the NBA. If the Celtics fall short again, the West will be even tougher next season and maybe the rock, pager, scissors will break their way next year.