With the victory of the Boston Celtics in game 7 over the Miami Heat on Sunday, the game from the NBA Finals in 2022 is scheduled.
Game 1 is scheduled for Thursday in San Francisco. Warriors are preferred (-155 vs. Boston’s +135, according to Caesar’s Sports Betting), but I take the Celtics at seven. I think they get along very well with Golden State. Here are three areas in which the Celtics can work to their advantage to reach the 2022 NBA Championship.
1. Change the Celtics against the Warriors movement
Not only is this Celtics defense perhaps one of the best in modern history, it is perfectly suited to combating all movements outside the Golden State ball. Boston is changing everything that makes the lives of Clay Thompson, Stephen Curry and Jordan Poole difficult, as they seem to get rid of screens and misguided instructions. This is reflected in the numbers.
The Warriors aren’t a big game hunting team, which is good, because there’s really no weak connection to hunting in Boston’s defense (you could argue, maybe Grant Williams in space). It will be difficult to skate for Warriors to create a consistent quality of vision on the half-court. Marcus Smart, Jason Tatum, Derrick White, Jaylan Brown, all of these guys can reasonably bother Curry in one-on-one situations, and Al Horford defends well on the perimeter, so it doesn’t matter what match Curry or Poole end up in late situations.
Golden State will want to act early in the strike time, but with how well Boston is recovering from the shooters, many possessions may last longer than the Warriors would like – at this point an advantage for Boston.
Not to mention Golden State’s tendency to turn the ball around. Boston will put a lot of pressure on the ball. They will pursue and double, recover and change. They will be caught and detained the way Miami caught and detained them. Will the Warriors be able to find enough space in the course of the series to really start their shots? On the spur of the moment, of course. But in the long run, I think Boston’s defense is causing a lot of problems for Golden State.
2. Open season of Steph
As long as the Celtics don’t offer a weak defensive link for the Warriors to target (depending on how long Peyton Pritchard sees himself in this series), the Boston will go right against Curry, and possibly Poole.
Boston spent a lot of time looking for favorite games against Miami and the team was successful. Golden State did well when Luka Doncic often turned to Curry last round of pick and roll; they didn’t want to transfer Curry to Doncic, just as they didn’t want to let him defend Tatum or Brown in the finals, so they had Curry show / hedge Doncic long enough to stop his momentum so the original defender could recover. as Curry runs back to her task.
There is a vulnerability in these parts of the recovery seconds. All this hedging and wing reinforcements sinking into the lanes will find shooters and minor playmakers for Boston, which is simply better prepared to punish the Golden State in this regard than Dallas. Jalen Brunson is not Brown, even when you consider Brown’s inability to dribble consistently at times. Clever, White, all these guys will be playing out of dribble if they’re constantly leveraging in their favor. Boston entered the fight with great success when he was determined to do so.
If Tatum, who was great at hitting teammates in Match 7, and Brown manage to use the attention they get to set their teammates up for a clean look, the Warriors, who don’t like to double the team, will have a dilemma. to ask Curry and / or Poole to keep straight, while Boston has far fewer pressure points in defense (I would say there are none) so that Golden State can press.
3. Size matters
Statistically, the Warriors were a better rebounding team than the Celtics in the postseason, but look at the games. Golden State played with a small team from Dallas and a team from Memphis, which were without Stephen Adams for half of the series (when Adams played, he injured them in the glass during his minutes with 12 offensive fights in matches 4 and 5). Boston had to deal with Bucks and Heath, who break up much harder than their small squads suggest.
In this game, the Celtics – with Horford and depending on the health of Robert Williams – can play bigger than Golden State, which received a great game from Kevan Looney (who completely reversed Adams’ script in the clinker of Game 6 with 22 boards, including 11 offensive to only one for Adams), but will obviously be small with Draymond Green at five quite often.
No one at the Celtics is looking for offensive fights like Adams, but still, if Looney has to play big minutes to keep Boston under control on the glass, it reduces the offensive firepower of Golden State and really how many minutes Looney can fight. with Horford and the two Williams for a series of seven games? Also, Horford will largely draw Luni from the paint in single large formations.
Draymond Green will obviously be fighting, and Andrew Wiggins is a solid rebound (as is Curry), and the Warriors are more than able to hold on or even win the rebound battle in this match (offensive rebounding has never been harder for forecasting with all long bounces on strikes for 3 points).
But Boston, on paper, has a chance to establish some physical dominance on the boards (realizing that he will try to balance his return to the transition to find the Golden State scorers). And if it does, creating consistent second-chance opportunities, combined with a two-way perimeter that Boston boasts, adds up to the series in a big way.
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