Simon Dalton presents his prediction for the NBA match.
Dallas Mavericks
The Mavericks are in the hopeless situation. The only think they can dream of now is to make these series last one game longer. The Mavericks lost their chance to beat the Celtics in the 2nd game. Luka Dončić destroyed the comeback by receiving 6 fouls on Thursday. The main reason why the Mavericks suffer so much in these series is in the maths.
The team has no terrible problems with the defensive actions. You can play well with 106 points per match taken by your opponents. The Mavericks rely too much on Dončić and Irving in the attacking line. The others are unable to score a lot. The Mavericks made 25 3-points attempts last game, while the Celtics made 46. Although the accuracy is pretty much the same (36% vs 37%). The Celtics win with the number of attempts (17 accurate ones versus 9).
Boston Celtics
The Celtics have been dominating the series. Although they played really cool only in the first game. The Celtics are much stronger as a team if they managed to win the second match despite the awful playing of their main star and they won the third game despite an injury. Taytum feels fine, playing the away games and Porziņģis can be substituted by Xavier Tillman and Sam Hauser. Both scored important 3-points shots (4 out of 5) and played perfectly in defence (+25).
Dallas Mavericks – Boston Celtics prediction
If the Celtics win they will be amongst the teams that manage to get the title, losing less than 3 games in the play-offs. There’s been no team to come back from 0-3 in the final series. A team, leading the series in this case has finished it in 64.3% of occasions (9 out of 14). Too many things should happen to help the Mavericks win at least this game.
