The NBA Finals Are A Mismatch

The “best” defensive team in the NBA is now in northern California for one reason and one reason only. They got lucky when Jimmy Butler missed a 3-point shot with 16.6 seconds left Sunday that would have put the Miami Heat into the finals.

Had Butler’s shot gone in, it would have capped a 14-0 run over the final 3 ½ minutes. 

It did not.

But the point here is that we have a team in the finals representing the Eastern Conference that allowed an opponent to score 11 consecutive points in the final stages of the biggest game either team had played all season. For the players on the Celtics, it was more or less the biggest game of their lives (Jayson Tatum is excepted because he played for an Olympic gold medal last summer).

And when push came to shove for those Boston Celtics, they wilted under the pressure. Defensive? Puh-leez. The surrendered bucks on five of six Miami possessions.

What’s more, over a span of seven offensive possessions, the Celtics missed five shots and committed two turnovers. The only reason they won was because Butler came up short on the go-ahead 3-pointer, most likely because his back hurt from carrying his team through more or less each and every one of their 18 playoff games.

And so Boston advanced, much to the delight of everyone in Massachusetts and much to the dismay of each and every one of the 13 Eastern Conference teams that did not make it to the NBA’s final four. It is a sad state of affairs when the team that emerged from the East did so despite a late-game collapse that would have doomed any team nine times out of 10.

So as all eyes turn to San Francisco for Thursday night’s Game 1 of the NBA Finals, let’s not forget that the road to the championship for the Celtics included victories over a Brooklyn Nets team that had extraordinary internal issues related to Kyrie Irving’s refusal to get a COVID vaccine, Ben Simmons’ inability to play a single second after he was acquired in the James Harden trade, and a version of Kevin Durant that could not match the competitiveness of his friend and former Team USA teammate, Tatum, who cannot seem to play with as much fire against other teams as he consistently does against the Nets.

Boston also got past the defending champion Milwaukee Bucks because coach Mike Budenholzer decided that if anyone was going to beat his team, it was going to have to be Grant Williams, who produced what shall forever be known in NBA lore as the Grant Williams game. The Celtics also had the good fortune of Coach Bud using Wes Mathews and Grayson Allen in his starting five, and those two players combined for a grand total of 11 points in 94 combined minutes in the Bucks’ Game 6 and Game 7 losses.

And then came the Heat, who won Game 6 despite being 8.5 point underdogs and then came up just short in Game 7 at home in a game they trailed pretty much the entire time. 

So yes, we are not all that enamored of the Celtics, although they are one of the two last teams standing and deserve some level of respect for doing that. So congratulations, Boston. Y’all gave good reason for everyone to resume referring to the grouping of the Celtics and 14 other teams as the Leastern Conference.

Good luck taking on a Golden State team that had been to five NBA finals in the previous seven seasons and now will be competing for the sixth time in eight years, something the NBA has not seen the likes of since the Los Angeles Lakers went to seven finals over a span of 11 years from the 1999-00 season through the 2009-10 season and Kobe Bryant was the most popular player on the planet.

Steph Curry is not anywhere near that stratospheric level, but let’s get one thing straight: Curry is the player everyone was talking about right through the All-Star game in February when he made an ungodly 16 3-pointers and scored 50 points in the league’s annual showcase event, two shy of Anthony Davis’ record.

Now Curry is back in the finals, where he has averaged 26.5 points in 28 career finals games. Of the top 10 most prolific 3-point shooting games in finals history, Curry has four spots, including the record of nine against Cleveland four years ago when the Cavs swept another team with just one truly great player, LeBron James. 

That role will be played this year by Tatum, who has a ways to go, one might say, before he is in the same echelon as James. Yes, Jaylen Brown is a nice player and Marcus Smart is a gifted defender and fiery leader. But those guys do not have the experience, the savvy or the smarts and skills of Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green. 

And for all the platitudes that should be bestowed upon Ime Udoka for the job he did in his first year as a head coach, he is no Steve Kerr, who played in the NBA Finals five times and won every single time, and now will be coaching in the championship round for the sixth time. The biggest guarantee of this series is that Kerr will definitely not get rattled in the slightest by anything that happens on the court.

But getting his players to give full focus for every single minute of every single game? Nah, the guy probably cannot do that, based upon what we have seen from the Golden State Warriors in their earlier playoff games against the Nuggets, Grizzlies and Mavericks when they went 0-3 when they had a chance to finish off their opponents on the road. Kerr’s team went through the motions each time and had to flip the switch back to “on” in their next games.

These Dubs have that ability and that nonchalance, which often comes off as hubristic and foolhardy. But they are what they are and they know how good they are, and that is probably going to cost them in this next series. Once.

It says here that this is a mismatch because of the Warriors’ superior experience, superior offensive skills and superior acumen. But we have learned this postseason that they let their guard down a little too easily because they are conceited and arrogant, albeit in a non-offensive way. They are just too good to be anything but overconfident, and their own pomposity may be their most formidable enemy.

Boston is a good team, not a great team. They will probably win one game. Two seems like a stretch. 

All NBA fans have suffered through a half-month of mostly non-competitive games, and commissioner Adam Silver can only hope that what we witnessed in the conference finals is not repeated in the championship round. When hockey is more compelling than hoops in late May, things just ain’t right. But that’s the way it goes from time to time in the NBA, and the league always bounces back. 

What we are about to see as June begins should be compelling, but we are making no promises there. The Celtics showed what they are made of in the final 3 ½ minutes of Game 7 against Miami. They do not appear ready to succeed at this late stage. 

The pick here is Golden State in 5, which will get you +450 at the sportsbooks operating in the legalized U.S. market. If you want to hedge and feel that the letdowns we have seen from the Dubs will now cease, go ahead and place a futures bet on a sweep at +1200. One team is a heckuva lot better than the other. And that lesser team would not even be here if Butler had put another six inches on that last 3-pointer he attempted.