He dished out a team-high six assists Friday night to go with 21 points.

“It’s not just me vs. Celtics or Luka [Doncic] vs. Celtics or anybody vs. the media,” Irving said. “It’s us against the world, sort of to say, going against this good Celtics team.

“You saw all those Celtics fans in there tonight. They travel in packs. 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. It’s a beautiful thing, but it also can be chaotic if you don’t know how to stay poised through it. I think we’re figuring out each other throughout those phases.”

The Mavericks held the Celtics to their lowest scoring total of the postseason after Doncic had faced heavy criticism about his defense.

Coach Jason Kidd previously said he believed some of the commentary had gone too far, but that Doncic would learn from it and get better. He did just that on Friday night, Irving said.

“I think he made a few people eat their words,” Irving said. “In a healthy way — I’ll say that in a healthy way. I don’t want to curse up here or anything like that, get into any unnecessary beef, right, between us as players and the media.

“I think this is his first opportunity and first taste of what it’s like to be on this stage, and to not play up to your capabilities or be out there toward the end of the game where every mistake is magnified. I think that’s probably what I’m really referring to, is when every mistake is magnified, there is going to be a response.”

Doncic (29 points, 5 assists) said he does not believe his team’s bounce-back performance changes the outlook of the series.

“Like I said at the beginning of the series, it’s first to four,” he said. “We’re going to believe until the end. So we just got to keep going. I have big belief in this team that we can do it, so we just got to keep believing.”

Irving’s message to the Mavericks ahead of the game was to go home, get the metaphorical bazooka, and hit the Celtics with their best shot. The Mavericks jumped out to a 26-point halftime lead and never looked back.

“It was how we started off the game,” Irving said. “Our ability to go home, get some rest, not having the same 48 hours to get our bodies ready and recover. So it felt like it was pretty much the regular season in terms of that aspect.

“What I was referring to in that metaphor is go home, get all the armor, get all the ammo that you need, and get ready for this because we’re going to have to keep firing away to give ourselves a chance on the offensive end.”

Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla often says that the harder-playing, more desperate team wins. On Friday night, it was the Mavericks.

“Yeah, the score. It’s real simple,” Kidd said. “We don’t have to complicate this. This isn’t surgery. Our group was ready to go. They were ready to celebrate. Understand, we made a stand. We were desperate.

“We’ve got to continue to keep playing that way; understand they’re trying to find a way to close the door. The hardest thing in this league is to close the door when you have a group that has nothing to lose. Tonight you saw that. They let go of the rope, you know, pretty early.”