Tag: Mavs

Klay Thompson heading to Mavs; George joining 76ers

On: By: admin


Klay Thompson of the Golden State Warriors celebrates a three point shot during the second half of a game against the Utah Jazz at Delta Center on February 15, 2024 in Salt Lake City, Utah.  (Getty Images via AFP)

NEW YORK – Paul George is joining the Philadelphia 76ers and Klay Thompson is heading to the Dallas Mavericks, multiple US reports said Monday as NBA free-agency got into full swing.

Thompson is widely regarded as one of the greatest shooters in basketball history, forming a potent back-court partnership alongside Stephen Curry and featuring prominently in the Warriors’ NBA championship-winning seasons in 2015, 2017, 2018 and 2022.

Thompson, whose exit from the Golden State Warriors was confirmed on Sunday, has agreed terms on a three-year $50 million contract with Dallas, ESPN reported.

Nine-time All-Star George is joining the Sixers on a four-year deal worth $212 million while

The two deals bolster the Sixers’ and Mavs’ championship aspirations, with George set to form a big three alongside Joel Embiid and Tyrese Maxey, and Thompson linking up with Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving in Dallas.

George, 34, has averaged 20.8 points, 6.3 rebounds, 3.7 assists and 1.7 steals a game over 867 career contests in 14 seasons for Indiana, Oklahoma City and the Los Angeles Clippers, who he left behind last weekend after five seasons.

NBA clubs have a signing moratorium on finalizing all contracts until Saturday, so it’s left to media reports to chart the moves that cannot yet become official.

George’s coming to terms was reported by the Philadelphia Inquirer, The Athletic and ESPN through unnamed sources.

The 76ers have not advanced beyond the Eastern Conference semi-finals since 2001 but might have their best chance with George joining All-Star guard Tyrese Maxey and Cameroonian star center Embiid, the 2023 NBA Most Valuable Player.

Multiple reports on Monday also had Maxey signing a five-year maximum contract extension worth $204 million. Maxey averaged 25.9 points and 6.2 assists for the Sixers last season.

George declined a $48.8 million deal for next season with the Clippers to test his value on the free agency market.

The 76ers also reportedly have struck a two-year deal worth just over $10 million with center Andre Drummond, a 12-year NBA veteran and five-seasons league rebounding leader.

Tobias Harris, a forward who played the past six seasons in Philadelphia, is reportedly off to the Detroit Pistons on a two-year deal worth $52 million.



Your subscription could not be saved. Please try again.


Your subscription has been successful.

Center Isaiah Hartenstein, according to multiple reports, will leave New York for a three-year deal worth $87 million with the Oklahoma City Thunder, who also reportedly struck deals with reserves Aaron Wiggins and Isaiah Joe.

Celtics’ Porzingis returns to play for Game 5 vs Mavs

On: By: admin


Kristaps Porzingis #8 of the Boston Celtics speaks to officials during the second quarter of Game Five of the 2024 NBA Finals against the Dallas Mavericks at TD Garden on June 17, 2024 in Boston, Massachusetts. Adam Glanzman/Getty Images/AFP

BOSTON — Kristaps Porzingis returned to the floor on Monday night as the Boston Celtics attempted to close out the Dallas Mavericks in Game 5 of the NBA Finals.

Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla told reporters before the game that Porzingis would be available and said, “We expect to see him tonight.” The 7-foot-2 Latvian drew a big cheer when he got off the Boston bench to check into the game with 6:49 left in the first quarter.

He missed his first shot, a 3-point attempt.

READ: NBA Finals: Celtics aim to regroup after Mavericks avoid sweep

Mazzulla said Porzingis, who missed the previous two games because of a dislocated tendon in his left ankle, would not have a minutes restriction.

He was cleared to play a limited role in Game 4, but never took off his warmups during Boston’s 122-84 loss in Dallas.

Porzingis had been listed as questionable Monday morning before going through an on-court workout about 2 1/2 hours before tipoff.

READ: NBA Finals: Celtics offer little on Porzingis after leg injury

The workout included shooting, some light-contact post work and lateral movement drills.

The Celtics have said that his tendon issue is unrelated to the calf strain Porzingis sustained April 29 in the first round against Miami that led to him missing 10 games.

Porzingis averaged 13.5 points and 5.0 rebounds in his first six games this postseason, including 20 points, six rebounds and three blocked shots in Game 1 against Dallas.



Your subscription could not be saved. Please try again.


Your subscription has been successful.

Rookie leaving impression as Mavs try to stay alive

On: By: admin


Dallas Mavericks center Dereck Lively II (2) scores against the Boston Celtics during Game 4 of the NBA basketball finals, Friday, June 14, 2024, in Dallas. (Stacy Revere/Pool Photo via AP)

Dereck Lively II drained the first 3-pointer of his career, forced a missed layup at the other end and ping-ponged back down the court to slam home an alley-oop pass.

The Dallas Mavericks didn’t trail again in Game 4 of the NBA Finals against Boston following that first-quarter sequence from their 7-foot-1 rookie center.

And while a series loss to the Celtics with the title on the line still seems inevitable, the 20-year-old from Duke has left an impression on the global basketball stage.

Never mind the unmistakable imprint from Lively on a franchise that tanked to try to preserve the first-round draft pick that landed him — but wasn’t really expecting this much this soon.

“I think people forget he’s a rookie,” superstar Luka Doncic said after the 122-84 blowout in Game 4 that kept Boston from sweeping. “He’s a rookie doing this stuff. He’s been amazing the whole season. Just watching him grow was unbelievable.”

READ: NBA Finals: Irving ends skid vs Celtics, now Mavs try to win in Boston

Next up for Lively is trying to make a little more noise in Boston. The chance comes in Game 5 on Monday night.

In the two Dallas losses at TD Garden, he had a combined four points on four shots with 12 rebounds.

Lively grabbed at least that many rebounds in each game in Dallas, scoring 11 points both times to join Magic Johnson (1980) as the only rookies with consecutive double-doubles in the NBA Finals.

He won’t be the focal point for the jeers from the opposing crowd — fellow Duke alum Kyrie Irving is the foil for Boston fans after spurning their team in free agency five years ago and fueling the rage with his antics on the parquet floor since then.

Lively feels the need to prepare for it nonetheless.

“It’s going to be loud and nasty,” Lively said. “You do your best not to focus on the crowd. There’s going to be a lot of people talking to you. It’s part of the game. Part of the job.”

READ: NBA Finals: Mavericks crush Celtics to avoid sweep

When the Mavericks added another pick-and-roller and rim protector before the trade deadline in Daniel Gafford, it figured to be for depth behind Lively.

But Lively was in and out of the lineup because of injuries in the second half of the season, and the Mavs went 18-2 in a 20-game stretch with Gafford as the starter.

Gafford has started every playoff game, but the pendulum has swung back to Lively as the primary contributor at center. His earliest entry into a game in the finals, with 9:30 left in the first quarter in Game 4, came not long before the corner 3 that sent the crowd into a frenzy.

Had the score been closer, Lively probably would have had a second consecutive 30-minute game. At one point in the second half, he already had all 12 of his rebounds while Boston’s entire team had 16.

“A lot of this playoff season, playoff series, has just been finding out who we are, finding how much can we get hit and then throw one back,” Lively said. “It’s definitely been an enjoyable time to just see my teammates and myself just grow and adapt with one another with what’s going on on the floor.”

Fans might have been asking what was going on when Doncic passed to Lively behind the 3-point line in the corner — and Lively shot it. The scene unfolded seven months to the day since Lively’s most recent shot from behind the arc, one of just two in the regular season.

His fellow Mavs shrugged it off after the game.

“He can shoot,” coach Jason Kidd. “But as a 20-year-old, he’s grown up in the AAU circuit where in high school, he could shoot, he could handle. He’d tell you he played point guard.”

Irving probably wouldn’t dispute it.

“I mean, if you’re familiar with D-Live’s game, you know in high school he was shooting those 3s,” Irving said. “It’s crazy. I was watching highlights not too long ago.”

The first priority for Lively in the offseason might be free throws. Oklahoma City fouled him on purpose a few times in the second-round series. He shot 50.6% from the line in the regular season but has improved to 59% (36 of 61) in the playoffs.

As for those 3s, Lively was seen shooting them during portions of practice open to reporters during the playoffs, and Kidd has called them the next step in his development.

Such talk bodes well for Lively’s development in the areas where the Mavs will depend on him the most — around the basket.

“I wouldn’t have expected myself to be in this spot whenever I looked at the draft a year ago,” said Lively, who was taken 12th overall. “The draft is a week away. Last year, a week away from the draft, my heart was pumping because I didn’t know what was going to happen. And now I’m playing in the NBA Finals.”



Your subscription could not be saved. Please try again.


Your subscription has been successful.

And leaving an impression — again.

In hostile Boston, Mavs’ Irving aims to keep focus on NBA Finals

On: By: admin


Kyrie Irving of the Dallas Mavericks looks to pass the ball during the third quarter against the Boston Celtics in Game Two of the 2024 NBA Finals at TD Garden on June 09, 2024 in Boston, Massachusetts.  (Getty Images via AFP)

NEW YORK – Resigned to the villain’s role in Boston, Dallas star Kyrie Irving is less concerned with silencing hostile Celtics fans than with quieting self doubt and leading the Mavs in a must-win NBA Finals game five.
“Let’s just call it what it is,” Irving said Sunday as the Mavs prepared to try once again to fend off elimination in the championship series, in which they trail the Celtics 3-1.
“When the fans are cheering ‘Kyrie sucks’ they feel like they have a psychological edge, and that’s fair,’” said Irving, who was hounded by Celtics fans still rankled by his departure in 2019 after two seasons with the team.
Amid the jeers he delivered two sub-par performances in games one and two, the Mavs eventually falling 0-3 down before a blowout victory in game four to extend the series.
“Of course, if I’m not making shots or turning the ball over, that makes it even more of a pressing issue that they can stay on me for,” Irving said.
“I think in order to silence even the self-doubt, let alone the crowd doubt, but the self-doubt when you make or miss shots, that’s just as important as making sure I’m leading the team the right way and being human through this experience, too, and telling them how I feel.”
Sunday’s victory ended Irving’s own 13-game losing streak against the Celtics.
He’s cognizant of his complicated personal history with the team, which he said stretches back further than his petulant demonstrations when his Brooklyn Nets were swept by the  Celtics in the first round in 2022.
He said Sunday it started when he arrived in Boston in 2017, when he failed to engage with the history of the storied franchise or, as he put it “the cult that they have here.
“That’s what they expect you to do as a player,” Irving said. “They expect you to seamlessly buy into the Celtics’ pride, buy into everything Celtics. And if you don’t, then you’ll be outed.
“I’m one of the people that’s on the outs,” he added with a laugh. “I did it to myself.”
Now Irving is more concerned with the task facing the Mavericks as they try to become the first NBA team to erase an 0-3 deficit to win a playoff series.
“Most importantly, (it’s) not making this about me or getting into the energy with anyone else other than my teammates,” Irving said, adding that the Mavs must think “about the goal that we have in front of us as best we can, and try not to get tired of everyone talking about the history that has not been made.”
Irving, who won a title alongside LeBron James in Cleveland in 2016, said he had encouraged his teammates — many in the Finals for the first time — to embrace and enjoy the moment.
“We got a chance to accomplish one of our goals, which is to make it back to Boston,” Irving said. “We have another goal in front of us, and that’s to make it back to Dallas.”



Your subscription could not be saved. Please try again.


Your subscription has been successful.

Irving ends skid vs Celtics, Mavs try again in Boston

On: By: admin


Dallas Mavericks guard Kyrie Irving, center, drives to the basket against the Boston Celtics during the first half in Game 4 of the NBA basketball finals, Friday, June 14, 2024, in Dallas. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez)

DALLAS — Kyrie Irving’s personal 13-game losing streak against the Celtics is over.

Now it’s back to the parquet floor in Boston to face his former team again, the Dallas Mavericks still alive in the NBA Finals after avoiding a sweep with a 122-84 blowout in Game 4 on Friday night.

The first two road games in this series weren’t Irving’s best, the two in Dallas quite a bit better despite a Game 3 loss that left the Mavs with a deficit no NBA team has overcome to win a playoff series.

Combine that with much more of an impact from the role players around Irving and co-star Luka Doncic, and maybe the constant booing of Irving from the jilted fans in Boston won’t ring quite as loudly in Game 5 on Monday night.

Plenty of green-clad Celtics fans were planning a celebration in Texas, but the loud cheers early when the game was close didn’t last long.

READ: NBA Finals: Kyrie Irving says Mavericks change ‘starts with me’

“You saw all those Celtics fans in there tonight. They travel in packs,” said Irving, who spent two seasons in Boston. “When we go to Boston, there’s going to be a bunch of them yelling a whole bunch of crazy stuff still, but I think we’ve been able to grow and face kind of this adversity head on.

“We’re figuring out each other in a crazy way during the highest stage of basketball,” Irving said. “So it’s a beautiful thing, but it also can be chaotic if you don’t know how to stay poised through it.”

If the Mavericks are to become just the 12th of 157 teams to force a Game 6 after falling behind 3-0 — and get the title series back to Dallas — the supporting cast for Irving and Doncic will have to keep it up.

Dereck Lively II connected on a 3-pointer for the first time in his career — exactly seven months after the the second of the two regular-season attempts from beyond the arc by the 7-foot-1 rookie center.

At one point in the second half, Lively had 12 rebounds, his final total, to 16 for Boston. No wonder Dallas outscored the Celtics 60-26 in the paint, where Lively scored the other eight of his 11 points.

READ: Kyrie Irving channeling 2016 as Mavericks plot NBA Finals rally

Dante Exum hit two 3s and had another taken away when replay revealed he had stepped out of bounds. The buckets from deep were coming from so many Dallas players — 14 of 23, although those numbers were skewed a bit by the blowout — it didn’t matter that Doncic and Irving combined to go 1 of 14.

“It’s five people on the floor,” Doncic said. “So that’s huge for us. Everybody played with a lot of energy. That’s how we got to do it. We got to think the same way in Game 5 in Boston.”

Doncic scored 25 of his 29 points in the first half, while Irving had 10 of his 21 in the third quarter to help push a 26-point halftime lead to 38 before all starters were out of the game for good late in the third.

Lively’s games in the finals have somewhat mirrored those of Irving, his fellow Duke alum. The 20-year-old was mostly quiet in Boston. The two games in Dallas put him in the company of Magic Johnson as the only rookies with consecutive double-doubles in the NBA Finals.

He replaced starter Daniel Gafford earlier than in any of the previous finals games, and coach Jason Kidd said Lively just happened to be in the right spot — the right corner — when he hit the 3 to put Dallas ahead for good about three minutes later.

It’s unlikely Lively will start at this point — something he did early in his rookie season — but the crowd probably will notice when he heads to the scorer’s table for the first time back in Boston.

“If they leave me open in the corner, I’m going to get them up, for sure,” Lively said. “It’s just having that trust. Luka is going to give me the ball. As soon as I shot it, he kind of jumped for joy when it went in.”



Your subscription could not be saved. Please try again.


Your subscription has been successful.

Irving is still trying to find some joy in Boston, and he gets another chance this season.

‘Fun’ key to Mavs’ bid for unprecedented NBA Finals comeback

On: By: admin


Luka Doncic of the Dallas Mavericks reacts after fouling out in the fourth quarter against the Boston Celtics in Game Three of the 2024 NBA Finals at American Airlines Center on June 12, 2024 in Dallas, Texas.   (Getty Images via AFP)

LOS ANGELES – Dallas superstar Luka Doncic says the Mavericks must set aside the enormity of the task facing them in the NBA Finals and get back to having fun if they are to mount an unprecedented comeback against Boston.
The Slovenian fouled out with just over four minutes remaining in game three on Wednesday and could only watch from the bench as the Celtics thwarted the Mavs’ late rally for a 106-99 victory and a 3-0 lead in the best-of-seven championship series.
Dallas head into game four on Friday knowing no team has come back from 0-3 down to win an NBA playoff series.
If they are to become the first, Doncic said, they must forget their frustrations with the officiating, forget history and play the freewheeling game that saw them cut a 21-point deficit to one in the fourth quarter in game three.
“Go back to playing fun,” Doncic said of the message after Dallas studied the game three film on Thursday.
“We talk about how we come back from (21) points in the fourth quarter in the Finals. We were having fun. We were defending. We were running. Our pace was great. Just taking good shots.”
Doncic fouled out for just the third time in his career and for the first time in the post-season, but he’s made a habit of appealing to and arguing with game officials throughout his NBA career.
He’s said before it’s a habit he should break, and he admitted again on Thursday that complaining to game officials — sometimes to the detriment of his attention on the game in progress — was counter-productive since officials will always “have the last word”.
“I just really want to win,” Doncic said. “Sometimes I don’t show it the right way, but at the end of the day, I really want to win. I’ve got to do a better job showing it a different way.”
Doncic has been outstanding offensively in the Finals, averaging 29.7 points, nine rebounds and six assists over three games despite playing with a longstanding right knee sprain and sore left ankle and a painful chest injury sustained in game one that reportedly required pain-killing injections to allow him to play.
In the fourth quarter, however, he’s averaging 2.7 points and shooting just 20 percent from the field.
But Doncic has been ineffective on the defensive end, his weaknesses showcased in his sixth, disqualifying foul on Wednesday when he was whistled for a blocking foul as he tried to defend Jaylen Brown.
Mavericks coach Jason Kidd said Doncic needs to play smarter defensively and “understand that we’re there to protect him and help him if he does get beat.”
Star teammate Kyrie Irving — who won a title with LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2016 — had the same message for first-time finalist Doncic.
“He’s not alone in this,” said Irving, whose shooting struggles in games one and two in Boston increased the load on Doncic. “He’s played as best as he can despite the circumstances, just injuries and stuff.
“He’s been giving it his all. It’s not all on him.”



Your subscription could not be saved. Please try again.


Your subscription has been successful.