6 Mistakes that doomed the Dallas Mavericks from winning the Finals

1. Mavericks' star players failing to make a defensive impact

As for anything, your leaders in the locker room need to take the charge so that the role players can match that same energy. Unfortunately for Dallas, Kyrie Irving, and Luka Doncic failed to make a legitimate defensive impact outside of Game 4's victory.

Doncic and Irving sought to prove many doubters wrong throughout the regular season and the playoffs by becoming above-average defenders when on the floor. For the most part, the two superstars lived up to this expectation, and it's a huge reason why the Mavericks were in the possession to possibly when a championship a few weeks ago.

As mentioned before, Boston came out to tear down any positive Dallas narrative, one of which became that Irving and Doncic were playing great defense during the Mavericks' playoff run. Like any other team that played the Mavericks before, the Celtics tried matchup hunting both Doncic and Irving. However, with how versatile the Celtics offense can be, it worked like a charm.

One reason Boston's offense is so lethal is due to their ability to have five great offensive players on the floor at all times. For Dallas, this became an automatic red flag due to their inability to hide Doncic on a player who is either relegated to the corner or carries little to no offensive weight. A common trend you see with Dallas' game plan before a game or series is to hide Doncic on the opposing team's worst offensive player, this wasn't the case with Boston.

Doncic got exposed on the defensive end on a nightly basis against Boston and it even had many media figures questioning whether or not Doncic could win a title due to his lack of effort on the defensive end.

This isn't the first time Doncic has been called out publicly for his lack of attention on the defensive end, but this could be Doncic's biggest point of emphasis headed into a shortened offseason.

While Doncic played awful defense in four of the five games played, Irving became a net negative when switched onto bigger players. In many instances, Irving would play solid defense for the bulk of the shot clock, but due to the opposing player's size, he was able to get easy looks over Irving. One player who took advantage of Irving's lack of size was Kristaps Porzingis.

While Dallas may have fallen short of the ultimate goal which was winning a championship, this was still a huge step in the right direction for the Mavericks. They will look to cash in on the few assets they possess and will be poised to win the West again and give themselves another chance at winning the NBA championship. For offseason updates on Luka Doncic, Kyrie Irving, and the Dallas Mavericks, stay tuned as we will have you covered.