Who has an advantage in the 2022 NBA Finals? It depends on who you ask.
The Golden State Warriors are the current betting favorites and a popular choice among NBA experts. They have a total of 123 games to experience in the NBA Finals and a core that has won three championships together.
The Boston Celtics are the estimates of analytics models, however, with an 80 percent chance of winning the series at FiveThirtyEight and an 86 percent chance of raising the Banner 18 according to ESPN’s BPI metric.
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So how will this series unfold? We asked our Strat-O-Matic partners, who predicted the turn of the second half of Boston with impressive accuracy, to simulate this year’s NBA Finals.
The results are interesting, to say the least.
Breakdown match by match
NBC Sports Boston Illustration
Your eyes do not deceive you. Strat-O-Matic has the Celtics winning by five.
Boston makes a statement in Game 1 as Jayson Tatum (36 points) and Marcus Smart (13 assists) help propel a 22-point loss to Golden State. Unlike the previous series, the Celtics keep their footing in Game 2, beating a 34-point effort by Stephen Curry to secure a seven-point victory and take a 2-0 lead over Boston.
The Warriors secured an 89-88 victory in the 3rd game at TD Garden behind Curry’s 37 points, dropping the post-season Celtics home record to 5-5. However, Tatum comes to the rescue in Game 4, racking up 39 points in a 15-point win that gives the C’s a 3-1 lead in the series.
Golden State struggles in the fifth game, but the Jays prove they are too much to beat: Jaylen Brown scores 31 points, the highest of the game, while Tatum has 13 rebounds and seven assists in a four-point victory that guarantees the first title in the world. ‘Celtic NBA. since 2008.
The Cs go on a perfect 3-0 on the road in this simulation and win by an average of 12 points to dump the Western Conference champions.
Notable Celtic performances
NBC Sports Boston Illustration
The Celtics are hard to beat when Tatum and Brown are both in their game, and that’s exactly what happens in this simulation.
The Jays combined to score more than half of Boston’s points in the series, while shooting more than 45 percent and averaging 8.8 assists per game. Smart does his part as a facilitator (7.8 assists per game) and, most importantly, drops his shots, shooting a respectable 44.6 percent in the final after throwing 39.5 percent in the previous three Boston series.
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At Horford he also offers 14 points and eight solid rebounds per game, while Derrick White continues his strong play with 10.2 points and 3.2 assists per game to turn the series around for Boston.
Notable Warriors performances
NBC Sports Boston Illustration
No team had a better 3-point defense than Boston this season, and that trend continued when it mattered most.
Curry racked up nearly 30 points per game, but shot below his regular season 3-point percentage of 38 percent. Klay Thompson went from three to 20.5 percent for the series, while Jordan Poole collected just 7.2 points per game with 24 percent shooting from distance.
Poole’s lack of production is the biggest thing to take away here. While Andrew Wiggins averaged 16.8 points in the series in this simulation, Poole is Golden State’s top scorer outside of Curry and Thompson, who enters the final with 18.4 points per game.
If the Celtics can keep Poole from warming up and defending the 3-point line with that level of success, there’s a good chance they’ll raise the Banner 18.