With the Boston Celtics’ 7th game winning over the Miami Heat on Sunday, the 2022 NBA Finals game is set. The Celtics, No. 2 seed in the East, facing the Golden State Warriors, No. 3 seed in the West.
Match 1 is scheduled for Thursday in San Francisco. The Warriors are favored (-155 to +135 from Boston, by Caesars Sportsbook), but I take the Celtics in seven. I think they match up very well with Golden State. Here are three areas the Celtics can work to their advantage to come out with the 2022 NBA Championship.
1. Change of the Celtics against the movement of the warriors
This Celtics defense is not only arguably one of the best in modern history, but it’s perfectly suited to combat every move away from the Golden State ball. Boston changes everything, making life difficult for Klay Thompson, Stephen Curry and Jordan Poole as they seek to clean up the wrong screens and directions. This has been reflected in the figures.
The Warriors aren’t a great match-hunting team, which is good, because there’s really no weak link to hunt in the Boston defense (maybe you could argue Grant Williams in space). It will be difficult to go sledding for the Warriors to create a consistent quality look in the middle of the track. Marcus Smart, Jayson Tatum, Derrick White, Jaylen Brown, all of these guys can reasonably annoy Curry in individual situations, and Al Horford is good at defending on the perimeter, so it doesn’t matter which game Curry or Poole finish. in situations of delay.
Golden State will want to operate at the start of the pitching clock, but with Boston recovering from the shooters, many possessions could be longer than the Warriors would like, at which point, Boston advantage.
And that’s not to mention Golden State’s propensity to turn the ball around. Boston lobs the ball high into the air. They will chase and bend and recover and change. They will catch and hold on as Miami grabbed them and grabbed them. Will the Warriors be able to find enough space throughout the series to really launch their photos? At times, of course. But in the long run, I think Boston’s defense is causing a lot of problems for Golden State.
2. Season open to Steph
While the Celtics don’t offer a weak defensive link for the Warriors (depending on how long Payton Pritchard sees in this series), Boston will go straight to Curry, and probably Poole, too.
Boston had a great time looking for favorite matches against Miami, and the team was successful. Golden State handled it well when Luka Doncic frequently aimed Curry at the last round with pick and rolls; they didn’t want to change Curry to Doncic in the same way they wouldn’t want to leave him to defend Tatum or Brown in the finals, so they had Curry to show / protect Doncic long enough to stop his momentum so the original defender could leave. recovering as Curry returned to his job.
There is a vulnerability in these fractional seconds of recovery. All of this coverage and wing reinforcements sinking into the driving lanes will open up shooters and side players for Boston, which is better equipped to punish Golden State in this regard than Dallas. Jalen Brunson isn’t Brown, even when you consider Brown’s inability to bargain consistently at times. Smart, white, all these guys will play off the dribble if they are constantly leveraging in their favor. Boston delves into painting with great success when it is determined to do so.
If Tatum, who was great at creating shots for his teammates during section 7, and Brown are able to use the attention they call to set up teammates with a clean look, the Warriors, who don’t like to double team, they will. they have a dilemma at hand asking Curry and / or Poole to stay up, while Boston has far fewer defensive pressure points (I would say it doesn’t) for Golden State to continue.
3. Size matters
The Warriors have been, statistically, a better rebounding team than the Celtics in the postseason, but look at the clashes. Golden State played for a small Dallas team and a Memphis team that was left without Steven Adams for half of the series (when Adams played, he injured them in the cup during his minutes with 12 offensive rebounds on the Games 4 and 5). Boston has had to deal with the Bucks and the Heat, who clash far more than their small lineups suggest.
In this match, the Celtics, with Horford and depending on the health of Robert Williams, can play bigger than Golden State, which has achieved a great game of Kevon Looney (who completely turned the script of Adams in game 6 with 22 boards, including 11 offensives to just one for Adams), but he will obviously be small with Draymond Green at five quite often.
None of the Celtics chase offensive rebounds like Adams, but even so, if Looney has to play big minutes to keep Boston under control over the glass, that dampens Golden State’s offensive firepower, and really how many minutes Looney can record fighting against Horford and both. Williams in a seven-game series? In addition, Horford will largely pull Looney from the paint into large alignments.
Draymond Green will obviously fight, and Andrew Wiggins is a solid positional rebounder (as is Curry), and the Warriors are more than capable of holding on or even winning the bounce battle in this showdown. has never been so difficult). predict with all long 3-point shooting rebounds).
But Boston, on paper, has a chance to assert some physical dominance on the boards (though he understands he will try to balance the transition return to locate the Golden State shooters). And if it does, the creation of consistent second-chance opportunities, combined with the size of Boston’s two-way perimeter, accumulates in a number of important ways.