I hate when pundits and prognosticators pick a team to win a series in seven games.
They might as well not make a prediction. In such a scenario, there’s nothing between the teams, meaning there’s effectively no liability if the predictor chose the wrong team.
So I’m picking the Warriors to win the NBA Finals over the Boston Celtics … in seven games.
Hold on! Let me explain! I swear this isn’t a cop-out.
I’ve long held that Boston is the worst possible NBA Finals matchup for the Warriors. My gut reaction to this possible showdown — my take before I re-watched a dozen games and spent hours looking at various spreadsheets — was Boston in 6.
I’ll explain the ins and outs of why (yet again) in a moment.
But I can’t overlook the last two games of Boston’s Eastern Conference Finals win over the Miami Heat.
Boston was begging Miami to take away the burden of victory. They choked away Game 6 and nearly had an epic collapse at the end of Game 7.
Temperament is a huge factor in the postseason, and if Boston was cracking in the conference Finals, what will happen when they reach the big show, where no one on their team has played a single game?
There are so many good reasons to pick Boston in this series. Too many to overlook.
And the simplistic way to balance these factors is to put it all on the line in a winner-take-all game.
Now that’s a spot where temperament is important. One could even allege that “Championship DNA” would be necessary to win in a Game 7.
Do the Warriors have any of that?
Yes, the Warriors in 7 is the pick. Their experience puts them over.
But that’s the easy way of looking at it. Here’s the complicated one:
No team in the NBA switches on defense quite like the Celtics.
If you’re a Warriors fan who enjoys the chess match of basketball, that sentence should rattle you to your core.
Boston is long, strong, smart (no pun intended), and willing to mix and match. Most importantly, they’re sticky. That style of defense is built to stymie the Warriors’ motion offense, which uses off-ball screens and cuts to create open looks.
Two of the Warriors’ greatest foils during their dynastic run — the Cleveland Cavaliers and Houston Rockets — have used switch-everything defenses to slow down Golden State. The Cavs even won a series against the Dubs, coming back from a 3-1 deficit in the 2016 NBA Finals — a turnaround that had many factors but coincided, directly, with Cleveland coach Ty Lue deciding to throw caution to the wind and embrace complete switching. That’s how you end up with Kevin Love getting the big stop on Steph Curry (and his balky knee) in Game 7 of that series.
The Warriors have shown the ability to score at all three levels — paint, mid-range, and beyond the arc — this postseason, but Boston has proven itself to be the only team in the league that can defend at a high level at all three of those levels.
A huge factor in this series will be Boston’s rim protection. The Warriors didn’t face a lick of it against the Dallas Mavericks in the Western Conference Finals — when they weren’t making shots they could go to the hoop with impunity. But we saw how Memphis’ big men could affect the Dubs’ attack in the prior round. It was a problem.
Al Horford and the Celtics wings do a really good job of protecting the rim for non-traditional paint protectors, but if Boston has Robert Williams III — the Timelord — in the paint, their defense goes from good to great.
After the All-Star Game, when the Celtics really started to roll, Williams’ rim protection was a level beyond elite. Teams shot 17% worse from 6 feet and in when he was on the floor, and nearly 20% worse from inside of 10 feet.
Williams in the paint turned the highest-percentage shots on the floor into attempts that go in well less than half the time. That’s insanity.
But Williams has a sore left knee that he’s fought with all postseason and will certainly be dealing with come the Finals. He only played 15 relatively ineffective minutes in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Finals.
With Boston’s tenacity on the perimeter and length in the mid-range, having Williams’ 7-foot-6 wingspan at the basket will tell us so much of what will happen in this series.
The Celtics have a defense built to frustrate and perhaps even negate the Warriors’ offensive system.
So how does Golden State counter?
There are some motion sets that could give Golden State better chances to break free — double-screens, post-ups, and slips — but those can only go so far.
No, the way to counter a switch-everything defense with perimeter length is to weaponize it by hunting matchups on the perimeter.
We saw this in the Eastern Conference Finals. Miami runs a motion offense not too dissimilar to the Warriors’.
They eventually just gave the ball to Jimmy Butler and asked him to take the team over the finish line. He nearly did it.
For the Warriors, this means running a high pick-and-roll and isolation sets for Steph Curry and Jordan Poole. And that’s not Warriors coach Steve Kerr’s offense.
To be fair to Kerr, though, the Warriors have been more Currycentric this postseason.
In all, 44% of Curry’s usage this postseason has been as a pick-and-roll ball-handler or in isolation. That’s 167 possessions in total.
The Warriors have scored 167 points on those possessions.
A point per possession is pretty good when you compare it to Luka Dončić, James Harden, Kevin Durant, and Celtics forward Jayson Tatum — other give-me-the-ball-and-get-outta-my-way stars. But how much of that output has come because a Curry-led offense is a change-up to the Warriors’ motion-offense fastball?
Is that change-up good enough to become the dominant pitch?
The Warriors love it when other teams allow one player to be the offense. Less than one point per possession a massive defensive win. But there’s an ideology here, too: collectivism is part of Golden State’s tactical DNA — Kerr truly believes that running a system for the whole team (with Curry’s gravity, of course) makes for a better offense and operation.
The Warriors’ success makes it hard to argue that he’s wrong.
But will that idealism carry the day in the Finals or will the necessary pragmatism take over?
It’s a fluid situation. Perhaps Strength In Numbers can win against Boston. Maybe only Poole runs pick-and-roll to start. But bon’t be surprised if Kerr waits until the Warriors trail in the series to go to the offensive style that is proven to give Golden State the best chance to beat Boston’s defense.
Old habits die hard.
Golden State is rested and they might be back to full strength going into Thursday’s Game 1. The Warriors have seven members of their rotation locked down — presuming Otto Porter plays.
But the eighth spot could be the difference in this series.
If the Warriors are going to be a more direct offense in these Finals, they need to surround Curry and Poole with shooters.
Can Gary Payton II, who fractured his elbow less than a month before Game 1, return to the fold? His defense would be a huge plus for the Dubs, but the eighth man also needs to be able to knock down a corner 3-pointer. Payton was a question mark as a shooter before the injury. What will he be afterward?
This is the same reason why Andre Iguodala could prove unplayable.
I’d worry about Nemanja Bjelica’s defense as a smallball 5, but his shooting could prove useful.
And then there’s Jonathan Kuminga, who is out of the rotation but boasts an athleticism that no one else on the floor could match.
Finally, we have Moses Moody.
The 19-year-old might be the best option. He’s solid and strong on defense and he can knock down the corner 3-pointer.
The downside? Well, he’s 19 years old.
Kerr will no doubt tinker with the backend of the rotation — there are too many good players on his team — but he cannot take too long to find the best option. A weak link can break the chain in the NBA Finals.
There is another effective way to attack a defense like Boston’s:
Never let it set up.
The Warriors are at their best when they turn defense into offense. That is creating turnovers that create fast-break opportunities or pushing off missed baskets.
This is how the Warriors control the pace and, so often, the game.
And this is the biggest advantage for the Warriors in this series outside of experience.
Boston can push the pace a bit on offense. We will get some wild back-and-forth action in this series, which is great.
But the Celtics can also jam up on offense with stunning ease.
Boston has two wings — Tatum and Jaylen Brown — who can create their own shot off the dribble. And while Marcus Smart is a brilliant player (and flopper) he isn’t a pure operator of a point guard and his jump shot is horrid.
The Celtics can be beautiful on offense. They can really whip around the ball and Tatum and Brown’s penetrate-and-kick game is great.
But pair this team’s youth and the stage, and Boston has been searching on the offensive end this postseason quite often. That usually ends with Tatum or Brown taking an ill-advised, defended shot late in the shot clock.
With Andrew Wiggins and Klay Thompson (whose defense improved dramatically over the course of the Western Conference Finals), Golden State stands a chance of getting those nasty looks from the Boston wings. I’d imagine they’ll leave Smart open to shoot to his heart’s content, too.
In all, Boston is taking more than a quarter of their shots with less than 7 seconds remaining on the shot clock this postseason — only Dallas (Dončić) and Philadelphia (Harden and Embiid) — had a higher percentage of late shots.
Boston is shooting 38% from the field on those shots.
Forty-five percent of those late shots are 3-pointers. Boston made only 28%.
And with Boston being an average rebounding team at best, that means the Dubs will have ample opportunity to run.
When the Warriors run, the Warriors win.
It won’t be every night. Tatum is a generational talent. Brown will have good games. Smart might even knock down a few shots.
But if Draymond Green — Golden State’s ace defender and de-facto point guard — is on his A-game, the Warriors will be able to push the pace in this series and control the pace of games.
And if you control the pace, you control the series.
The Warriors will have fresh legs, but a bit of rust in Game 1. I think they run to a solid win at home as Williams is a non-factor and the Celtics look gassed.
But Boston will recalibrate and take Game 2 at Chase Center behind a bounce-back performance from Tatum. They’ll take Game 3 behind a silly Marcus Smart game.
That’s when the Warriors get down to brass tacks. They’ll get more direct on offense and lock down on defense. Curry, paired with Wiggins and Thompson’s great catch-and-shoot abilities, will lead the Warriors to wins in Games 4 and 5.
Boston bounces back in 6, as Brown has a big contest and the Celtics role players knock down far more than their fair share of late 3-pointers. Sorry, no Game 6 Klay this go-around.
Now we’re at Game 7 in San Francisco. It’ll be a tight one, but the looser team will win. And that will be the Dubs.
And how’s this for a finish? Curry takes it to the rack in the final seconds this time, and the Warriors win their fourth title in eight years, with No. 30 claiming his first NBA Finals MVP.
