Warriors Were the Trendy Pick, But Celtics Proved They Match Up Better In NBA Finals
After a 120-108 Boston Celtics victory that ended with a 40-16 fourth quarter, the outlook of the 2022 NBA Finals is different than it was 24 hours ago.
Heading into Game 1, Bleacher Report's NBA staff picked the Golden State Warriors by a vote of 4-3. ESPN was more confident. Its tally was 18-5 in favor of the Warriors.
Maybe we all should've trusted the computers (and the last few months of evidence) a bit more.
From January 1 to the end of the regular season, Boston had (by far) the best net rating in the league. Despite having two series go seven games, they were first in that category in the playoffs too.
Their dominance made them overwhelming favorites against the Warriors in projection systems at ESPN, FiveThirtyEight and Basketball Reference. But we tend to distrust NBA teams and players until they win it all. Golden State's already done that three times.
And the inclination to go with the former champions felt pretty good in the first quarter of Game 1.
Stephen Curry hit an NBA-record six threes in that opening frame. He had 21 points on 7-of-9 shooting. On two possessions, Boston seemed to flat-out forget it was playing against the greatest shooter of all time. He walked into wide-open triples while the Celtics were trying to figure out whose responsibility he was.
But even with Curry looking like the 2015-16 version of himself, Boston only trailed by four after the first 12 minutes. And the rest of the half felt like a microcosm of the Celtics' season.
It took much of the first few months of 2021-22 for them to adapt to new coach Ime Udoka's switch-heavy defensive scheme. Once they did, Boston had the league's most devastating and dynamic defense.
On Thursday, after a few miscommunications in the first quarter, the Celtics stayed the course, continued to switch all over the floor and gained a little momentum in the second.
Golden State's constant ball and player movement is nightmarish for most defenses. Against Boston, it just looked sort of ho-hum.
Even teams with two or three plus defenders, like the Memphis Grizzlies, eventually break down, miss a back cut, botch a switch or wind up with a slow-footed big man scrambling on the perimeter.
In Boston's starting five, there are no weak links. All five players received Defensive Player of the Year votes. Marcus Smart, Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown can shut down perimeter matchups. Al Horford is about as good as any big when switching onto a guard or wing (look back on his defense against Giannis Antetokounmpo earlier this postseason). And Robert Williams III cleans up the few mistakes that are made like an All-Pro safety.
Even reserves Derrick White and Grant Williams could be dropped into the roster of plenty of other teams and instantly be one of their best defenders.
Regardless of who was on the floor Thursday, the Celtics were switching everything. With the exception of Curry's hot streak in the first quarter and a nice run from Andrew Wiggins in the third, it worked about as well as it did against most of the league.
Even with the slow start in November and December, the Celtics have an NBA-leading 22 20-point wins in the regular and postseason. And many of those came thanks to runs like the one Boston unleashed in Thursday's fourth quarter.
Curry hit two shots early in the final frame, but he couldn't find any space the rest of the way. And after Boston went 12-of-29 in the first three quarters, a dam seemingly broke in the fourth. In the final 12 minutes, the Celtics went 9-of-12 from deep and scored 40 points. They went on a 17-0 run that flipped the game on its head.
The scoring distribution in that run highlights another problem for Golden State. Tatum and Brown didn't contribute a single point. Tatum went 3-of-17 from the field for the entire game. The Celtics don't need to have Tatum dominate as a scorer (though his 13 assists sure helped).
On any given night, Boston can get big scoring performances from plenty of guys who aren't their No. 1 option. Thursday, Horford had 26 points on 9-of-12 shooting. Marcus Smart had 18 points on 11 shots. Brown was less efficient, but he still had 24. And the biggest swing may have come from White, who dropped 21 off the bench.
For the Celtics to comfortably win a game in which Curry had 34 and Tatum hit just three shots has to be concerning. The latter will absolutely have bigger scoring games. The former might have to play like he did in the first quarter for an entire game.
Boston is bigger, more explosive and younger at almost every position.
That doesn't mean the series is wrapped. Overreactions run rampant in the playoffs, and there's a reason so many trusted the Warriors before the series tipped off. More high pick-and-roll with Curry and Green could be in the cards (though Green's 2-of-12 shooting performance won't inspire much fear in the Celtics going forward). To mitigate some of the physical disadvantages, playing Gary Payton II and Jonathan Kuminga might be necessary.
The Warriors have been here before. They'll figure something out.
Forty-eight minutes into the Finals, though, it's a lot easier to see what the computers were banking on and a lot harder to trust our own pre-series judgments.
