The 2024 NBA Finals by the numbers

The NBA got the matchup it wanted.



With small-market Minnesota and Indiana making it to the conference finals, you could almost feel the league pulling for the big-market, superstar-laden Dallas Mavericks and Boston Celtics. After all, two small-market teams typically don’t make for a marquee series.



With Boston, we saw this coming. The Celtics have been historically dominant in 2023-24. With a league-best 64 wins, they rolled out the most efficient offense in NBA history, finished an NBA-record 14 games ahead of the No. 2 seed in the Eastern Conference, and have gone 12–2 in the playoffs en route to the NBA Finals. The Mavericks, meanwhile, overcame a slow start to the year and a mini rebuild at the trade deadline, finishing 22–9 down the stretch and knocking off three of the top four seeds in the Western Conference on their way to a date with Boston.



As the NBA Finals tip off Thursday night, here’s a look at the spectacle, and the matchup, by the numbers.



$872 Million



The 2024 NBA Finals isn’t just a matchup of NBA superstars and scoring machines. It’s a matchup of revenue juggernauts. According to the most recent data, the Celtics and Mavericks ranked fourth and fifth in the NBA, respectively, in team revenue, bringing in a combined $872 million in 2022-23 . The Celtics’ $443 million and the Mavs’ $429 million in revenue trailed only the Warriors, Lakers, and Knicks.



-13%



The NBA needed this matchup. Through the first three rounds, playoff ratings and viewership overall are down year over year, averaging a 2.2 rating (down 11% from last year) with 4.1 million viewers (-13% from 2023) heading into the NBA Finals. The conference finals each earned a 3.4 rating with an average of about 6.5 million viewers, so a marquee matchup of big-market teams led by bona-fide superstars might be just what the NBA needs to turn its viewership numbers around and finish the playoffs on a high note.



$4,150



Despite subpar playoff viewership, the NBA set records for attendance and sellouts in 2024, and ticket prices for this year’s finals are on the verge of record highs. According to data from TicketIQ , the average listing price for a 2024 NBA Finals ticket is $4,150, which would make this year’s finals the most expensive since the company began tracking ticket costs in 2011. As of this writing, the most expensive ticket for Game 1 in Boston is $67,857, and there are still tickets available behind the Celtics’ bench for Game 1 going for as much as $36,333.



$1.25 Billion



Winning the NBA Finals can mean big money for the victor. According to annual Forbes estimations, the previous three NBA champions have seen their valuations grow by an average of $1.25 billion from the season before. The Celtics are currently the league’s fourth-most valuable franchise at $4.7 billion, while the Mavericks come in seventh at $4.5 billion.



$12.1 Million



Players get paid for winning the title, too. The NBA Players Playoff Pool is divided among the playoff teams based on how far they advance in the playoffs. This year’s pool is  $33.7 million , up 25% from last year. The league also factors in regular season standings to determine teams’ payouts, with an added bonus for earning the league’s best record.



Players whose teams lost in the first round received payouts of around $450,000. The Celtics, should they win the title, would receive a $12.1 million payout (this includes a bonus for having the league’s best regular-season record), landing each player $804,000. The Mavs, meanwhile, could win $10.76 million ($717,133 per player).



$40 Million



Slovenian superstar Luka Doncic is the highest-paid player in the 2024 NBA Finals, receiving an annual salary in 2023-24 of just over $40 million, the 16th-highest in the league. The Celtics’ Jaylen Brown will soon surpass Doncic, as he received a five-year, $303.7 million supermax extension last summer that kicks in next season. Brown will make just under $32 million in 2023-24, but he is slated to earn $52.3 million when the contract kicks in next year, making him the NBA’s highest-paid player.



164%



During the Mavs’ unlikely NBA Finals run, the team has seen a 164% increase in online merchandise sales. Doncic also had the league’s sixth-highest-selling jersey in 2024—something surely to change if the Slovenian star adds an NBA title to his résumé.



33.9



Doncic led the NBA in scoring this season with 33.9 points per game. He’s the first scoring leader to play in that year’s NBA Finals since Stephen Curry in 2016. Doncic could be the first scoring champion to win a title in the same season since Shaquille O’Neal with the Lakers in 2000.



2



The 2024 finals will feature one of the greatest playoff scorers in league history in Doncic, who, at 31.3 points per game, is one of only two players who have averaged more than 30 points per game in their NBA playoff careers.



The other? Michael Jordan (33.4).



2×2



As in a pair of duos.



Doncic is just one part of one of the most dynamic scoring duos in the NBA in 2024 alongside Kyrie Irving. The two have averaged 51.6 points, 14.0 assists, and 13.5 rebounds through the first three rounds. Meanwhile, Boston features a powerful duo of its own, with its one-two punch of Brown and Jayson Tatum averaging a combined 51.0 points, 16.5 rebounds, and 8.5 assists heading into the finals. How each team defends the opposing duo will likely decide the series.



3



Get ready for a barrage of three-pointers. The Celtics led the league in made three-pointers in 2024, averaging 16.5 per game, while the Mavericks came in third with 14.6. The two also shot more threes than any other teams in the league. Thus far in the playoffs, the Celtics have taken 47.4% of their shots from 3-point range, the highest rate in the playoffs by far.



18



The Celtics have not won an NBA title since 2008, when they beat their longtime cross-coast rival Lakers. This year, the Celtics are gunning for their 18th NBA championship, which would break a tie with the Lakers for the most all-time. The Mavs are looking to win just their second NBA title. They won it all in 2011.



-230



With the best record in the NBA during the regular season, the Celtics were heavy favorites to reach the NBA Finals. The Mavs were not. Dallas was tied for sixth among playoff teams at +1800 to win the title heading into the playoffs and +2500 to win the title heading into the season. They opened as underdogs in each of the first three rounds and do so again in the finals, as the Celtics (-230) are favored to win it all when the series tips off on Thursday night in Boston.