BOSTON — Teams who fall lose two games in a row in the NBA Finals don’t win the series very often.
Teams trailing 2-0 have only won five times in 36 tries (13.9 percent). While the Dallas Mavericks are trying to join a pretty small club. Kyrie Irving is trying to start a society of one. No other player has ever come back from down 2-0 twice. Irving has one already on his resumé with the 2016 Cleveland Cavaliers.
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Irving and the Mavericks will try to make that history against the Celtics, who lead the NBA Finals, 2-0, after holding on in Game 2 on Sunday at TD Garden.
The five teams who have rebounded to win a championship after trailing 2-0 in the Finals are:
- 2020-21 Milwaukee Bucks (vs. Phoenix Suns)
- 2015-16 Cleveland Cavaliers (vs. Golden State Warriors)
- 2005-06 Miami Heat (vs. Mavericks)
- 1976-77 Portland Trail Blazers (vs. Philadelphia 76ers)
- 1968-69 Celtics (vs. Los Angeles Lakers).
That puts Irving in an interesting spot. His struggles are a big reason the Mavericks are in this hole and also why the people suggesting he and Luka Doncic are the best backcourt of all time have gotten quiet. Irving is averaging 14.0 points and 4.0 assists in the first two games. He’s shooting 35.1% and has yet to make a 3-pointer.
But he’s the one player in the Dallas locker room with credibility when he tries to convince his teammates that a comeback is in fact possible.
In 2016, he wasn’t much better against the Warriors. Irving averaged 18.0 points, 2.5 assists and was shooting 33.0% including just one 3-pointer on seven tries through two games.
But in the five games that followed he scored 30.8 points per game and hit a 3-pointer over Steph Curry in the final minute that sealed the Cavaliers win in Game 7.
“Being in the Finals before, down 0-2, I have a little experience in this. Didn’t play particularly well in the first two games in that series, too, that I’m referring to,” he said after Sunday’s loss. “So now I’m just really leaning in on what I’ve experienced, what I’ve learned and some of the lessons I’ve been able to make sense of in how to come back in this series because it is going to be a possession-by-possession thing, and it is going to be the hardest thing that we’ve ever done.
“So I think we’ve got a great feel, a great experience here in Boston of what the Finals is like for our group,” he continued. “Now we go home and shake off the cobwebs a bit and prepare for another fight.”
Irving isn’t the only player in this series to have come back from two down. Jrue Holiday was on the 2021 Bucks, who did it against the Suns.
