Young stars Jayson Tatum and Luka Doncic were set to do battle on Sunday in a primetime matchup, but the real show was the showdown of defenses. Both the Boston Celtics and Dallas Mavericks are the top-two ranked defenses in the league since the calendar turned to 2022. Neither team made it to the century mark on Sunday; this marked the first time Boston failed to score 100 points since January 28th.
From a personnel perspective, the Mavericks don’t have a slew of great individual defenders. Doncic is subpar on that end as he conserves energy for offense.