Are We Headed for a Celtics Warriors NBA Finals? That’s a Rhetorical Question, but Yes
It’s time to return to some long form writing, now that there’s finally half a second to make a prediction in these play-offs. I seem to remember previous seasons without a game every day through the first two rounds. I have no reason why, but I feel as if these playoffs have been so much more condensed. Which is great, because it means I don’t have to do any work, I just stare into my phone that I have propped up against some folders that look like real work and hope that I don’t work amongst any snitches.
Time for the conference finals and the brand spanking new trophies, named after Oscar Robertson and Bob Cousy, and the new MVP awards. When announced, I did call it the Chris Paul consolation prize, which is even more fitting now that he’s ineligible to win it. So let’s dive into the teams that are actually playing and figure out who’s going to win these things.
EAST: Miami Heat vs Boston Celtics
This is going to be a fantastic series, two of the best coached teams who play excellent defense, have plenty of likable players and even have a history stretching back to the bubble play-offs where the Heat beat the Celtics in the Eastern conference finals 4–2. That series began with Bam Adebayo blocking Jayson Tatum’s game winning dunk attempt, an act which set the tone for the series and for which Tatum has not yet taken his revenge.
At the same time, this series is going to be an absolute pain, as every commentator, journalist and basketball pundit extol the virtues of team basketball, fundamentals and “the right way to play the game“. Even if both of these teams’ offenses are focused on ball-movement, I don’t want to hear 48 minutes of Mark Jackson pretending like he knows how to coach that way. So help me if we get to game 3 in Boston and Jackson starts comparing this Celtics team to some old Bird or Russell team.
Of course the big matchup is Jason Tatum and Jimmy Butler, two superstar guards who carry the majority of the burden of scoring for both teams. Butler has shown shades of bubble Jimmy, putting together two tidy 40-point games so far in these playoffs. Jimmy’s doing the majority of his work inside the arc, as he’ll never be a 3-point shooter of note, so look for Boston to try and push him as far out of the lane as possible, same as they did for KD and Giannis.
No one really cared what Miami was doing in their second round series, as the focus was so heavily placed on what Philly, Doc Rivers and James Harden were doing wrong (everything). The Heat have skated by the first and second round without being placed directly under the media microscope. That’s a mistake because this team has been playing excellent basketball and are about to test themselves against the form team of the league. A team that is heavily supported, has plenty of attention on them, and the weight of an expectant franchise that hasn’t won a championship since 2008.
This series has all the hallmarks of an playoff classic, but will probably have two games where one team loses by 40, where everyone spends the entire next scratching their heads and asking do the Heat/Celtics suck?
For the Heat, who are likely to miss pointguard Kyle Lowry for the majority of the series, if not all potential seven games it will come down to their ability to play-make in all positions one through five. In the Philadelphia series, centre Bam Adebayo was so consumed with his task of defending Joel Embiid, that he was in some ways limited offensively. Credit to Bam, he did an outstanding job on Embiid in games five and six after being pushed around and knocked about in games three and four. Bam’s best qualities come on the defensive end of the court where he is an absolute stopper — a tangle of limbs and muscle and really intelligent movement which can terminate an entire offensive possession on its own. As well as that, Bam has a nuanced offensive game where he is an underappreciated passer, a decent enough shooter, and a ridiculously effective role man. There are many ways that Miami can win or lose this series, but Bam is a factor in all of them.
Meanwhile, we lay in wait to see if Duncan Robinson will ever return from his expulsion to the bench. Robinson has been absent from the majority of these playoffs, his minutes deservedly taken up by Max Strus. Robinson is the kind of dead eye-shooter that can make eight threes in a play-off game and completely take the other team out of it, but those guys have a tendency to come out of nowhere (see: Grant Williams in game seven against the Bucks).
Outside of Jimmy and Bam, the Heat have a bunch of “guys that could”. Victor Oladipo could score 35, or he could score 4 points; both are reasonably foreseeable in the series. Likewise, PJ Tucker could have 15 points, or he could have zero points and five fouls in 13 minutes of play. With Lowry injured, Miami have been starting Gabe Vincent, who is handy, but in his 8 playoff games has only made double digits four times, with a high of 15.
For Boston, they are coming out of probably the most encouraging series win for any team in these play-offs, after beating the limping horse of the Brooklyn Nets in a sweep, they came up against a determined Giannis who, despite missing Khris Middleton, basically took the series to 7 games on his own. The Celtics are riding high after and just had a game seven series win in front of their home crowd where they completely dominated the best player in the league in the second half.
Boston’s defense has been on an entirely new level these play-offs, the way that they have thrown bodies at Durant, Kyrie and Giannis has been extraordinary. The sheer combination of length, discipline and awareness that all five of Boston’s defenders show on every position is the kind that gets you through conference finals. This is all completely ridiculous for a team that looked as if it was on the brink of falling apart in December.
When it comes to the the Celtics offense, you’ve got your classic double Jays offense, as well as an improved Marcus Smart, the transformed Grant Williams, who just became the greatest shooter in Boston history, and a version of Al Horford whose DNA has been spliced with the late Wilt Chamberlain’s.
Tatum’s doing all kinds of wizardry in isolation, he’s completely únafraid of whoever is defending him and he knows that he only needs one or two dribbles to find himself free for a shot. The quality of individual defense on Tatum will take a jump this season and PJ Tucker will relish in the assignment.
This will come down to a rock fight. It’s a battle between two ridiculously talented defenses, one very good offense and one extremely good offense, the most competitive man on the planet in Jimmy Butler, the energy of two insane HomeCourt in Miami and in Boston it’s hard to see this going any less than seven games. Weighing all that together, Boston has the offensive edge which will take them over the top in a seven game series. It won’t come easy for them, but this this is finally the time the Fosters young core fulfil the promise of bringing this team back to the finals.
Oh, I almost forgot about the Larry Bird Eastern conference finals MVP trophy, which I guess will go to Jason Tatum.
WEST: Golden State Warriors v Dallas Mavericks
Heading into the play-offs, there were three teams that, as a Warriors fan, I wanted the team to completely avoid. They were: the Denver Nuggets, the Memphis Grizzlies and the Dallas Mavericks. Each of those teams have superstars capable of exploiting weaknesses in Golden State’s defense. Safe to say, it has been a tough month for my heart rate.
When it comes to Dallas, it’s unfair to the team and coaching staff to say that all their success is because of Luka, but a whole lot of it is because of Luka. The man is putting together one of the great postseason runs, after missing the first three games of the first round against Utah, Luka has proceeded to completely destroy the Jazz and now the presumptive favourite Phoenix Suns. In the second round, Luka was completely unfazed by Mikal Bridges and DeAndre Ayton on the defensive end – two of the best defensive players in the league, and was incensed whenever the Suns attempted to defend him using Cameron Johnson. By now, you would’ve seen all the memes about how terrible Phoenix played in that game seven and how they were so thoroughly dominated by Luka. That doesn’t make it less funny, but the memes take some of the shine away from that performance by Luka.
There is very little the Warriors can do to defend Luka, especially the way that he’s playing right now. Theoretically, they could try and employ some of the old tactics that they used to great success against James Harden in the 2018 and 2019 Western Conference Finals, where Draymond would roam the paint, tracking wherever Harden went, and attempting to force him into corners or uncomfortable shots as soon as he touched the ball.
The tactic won’t work as well now that Klay has lost one, if not two, steps on defense and Andre Igoudala has transitioned to assistant coach. Regardless, Luka seems to be so deeply offended on behalf of his teammates that another team would dare take a man of them to throw extra defenders at him. Andrew Wiggins will probably draw the assignment as his primary defender, a man who is absolute rocks or diamonds – but, as they say, pressure builds diamonds, and Wiggins has a whole fuckton of pressure. If there’s one thing the Warriors cannot do, it’s talk smack to Luka. From the moment that Devin Booker decided to start talking shit about Doncic in the second round, Luka responded by completely embarassing the entire franchise.
To give some praise to Luka’s teammates, Jalen Brunson has been one of the most entertaining players to watch in the playoffs. Against Utah especially, he was willing to run headlong into the paint at full speed regardless of the size of any defender in front of him. Brunson just brings a general “fuck you“ attitude to every possession, knowing that every bucket adds a couple of extra million in his off-season free agency. Throw in Maxi Kleber in the corner shooting 46% from deep throughout the entire play-offs and it’s not so obvious that you can just force Luka into passing to his teammates because his teammates are performing so well,
For the Warriors to win the series, it feels like a whole lot of “if’s“ have to go their way. If Klay Thompson plays like he did in game five of the Memphis series, there is no chance of the Warriors making it through. If Klay plays like he did in game six, it’s a completely different story. If the Warriors can find a solution for the whole left and their roster after an attempt was made on Gary Payton‘s life by Dillon Brooks (a.k.a. evil Danny Green) then the Warriors stand a better chance of defending this Mavs offense.
The Warriors are coming out of the Memphis series pretty battered and bruised. In the entirety of that series, they played exactly one all-around good game, three or so good quarters, and one absolutely horrific game. Amongst that they played some pretty middling offense, some strange defense and turned the ball over a whole lot.
In the second half of game six, things seemed to click when Kevin Looney and Draymond Green shared the floor, Looney finishing the game with 22 rebounds including 11 offensive boards. Given the Mavs ability to get up and down the court at speed when they want to, lead mostly by Brunson, then they will be able to play Looney off the floor. If the Mavs would prefer for Luka to take control of the game as he normally does with his slower change of pace style, then Looney has a spot in that rotation. It depends on match ups, but now that there’s nowhere to run in a seven game series, Looney might be one of the few curveballs that the Warriors could throw.
Of course, Steph has the ability to carry the team on his own, were it not for the fact that he will have three players defending him every time he gets his hands on the ball. Denver attempted this tactic in the first round, to which Curry replied by continuously driving the lane and attempting to draw fouls on Nikola Jokić. Jason Kidd will care less if Dwight Powell is in foul trouble, but expect to see plenty of actions where Curry dives towards the rim — however, for some reason Curry seems to have terrible luck of routine layups circling in then out of the rim.
Jordan Poole will have to rediscover his form from the first two games of this postseason if the Warriors are to advance. For all the praise that has deservedly been lumped on Poole in this postseason, he has shrunk in both of the series-clinching games that the Warriors have played so far. Luka now holds the record for the highest point scoring average in elimination games, and if this ends up in a game seven where Poole does nothing and Luka does everything then it’s a series win for the Mavs.
Because I’m unable to remove my personal biases, and I’ve seen enough from this Warriors team in this postseason to make me believe that a final worthy if not finals winning team can be found somewhere in this massive lineup, I’m taking the Warriors in six games and Draymond as the magic Johnson Western Conference finals MVP, ecause for whatever reason Steph is prohibited from winning any postseason MVP award.
As happens so often when writing about play-off basketball, everything can turn on a single moment door shot or injury or illness. For that reason, I’m going completely ironclad guarantee – it’s a Warriors Celtics Finals series coming baby.