Indiana Pacers point guard Tyrese Haliburton’s availability for Game 3 of the Eastern Conference Finals is in doubt, raising further concerns about the value of the Boston Celtics‘ run to the NBA Finals.
If Haliburton’s left hamstring, which sidelined him for a time in January, were to cost him the rest of this series, the Celtics could face decisive games against a third straight opponent without their best player. Jimmy Butler missed the entirety of the Miami Heat‘s five-game first-round loss to Boston. Donovan Mitchell missed the Cleveland Cavaliers‘ last two losses in a five-game Eastern Conference semifinals.
Even if Haliburton goes lame, would this be the easiest path to an NBA Finals?
With Tyrese Haliburton limping along, the Pacers probably won’t stand in Boston’s way for much longer. (Keynote USA Photo/Michael Dwyer)
At least not statistically speaking. Boston’s opponents – the Heat (46-36), Cavaliers (48-34) and Pacers (47-35) – have won an average of 47 games. Since the league expanded to its current 16-team format for the 1984 playoffs, 18 NBA finalists have faced a lower average (or its equivalent) in three rounds:
18. 2020 Los Angeles Lakers (46.9)
T15. 2016 Golden State Warriors (46.7), 2001 Philadelphia 76ers (46.7), 1985 Boston Celtics (46.7)
14. 1989 Detroit Pistons (46)
13. 1986 Boston Celtics (45.7)
12. 2003 New Jersey Networks (45.3)
T10. 2007 Cleveland Cavaliers (45), 2002 New Jersey Nets (45)
9. 1995 Orlando Magic (44.7)
8. 1991 Chicago Bulls (44.3)
T6. 2013 Miami Heat (44), 1983-84 Boston Celtics (44)
5. 1988 Los Angeles Lakers (43.7)
T3. 2023 Denver Nuggets (43.3), 1985 Los Angeles Lakers (43.3)
2. 1984 Los Angeles Lakers (40.7)
1. 1987 Los Angeles Lakers (39.3)
Some observations:
Those years between Michael Jordan’s last dance with the Chicago Bulls and the rise of LeBron James were difficult in the East. The 2003 New Jersey Nets won 49 games and faced opponents who won an average of 45.3 games. It’s a wonder they took two games away from the Spurs in the NBA Finals.
The Western Conference during the heyday of Magic Johnson’s Lakers in the 1980s: wow.
It’s hard to analyze injuries, mainly because guys in the 1980s played big minutes on bad legs. For example, Larry Drew, the starting point guard for the 1984 Kansas City Kings, played all three games of a first-round series against the Lakers with what he later described as “a knee that was only 60% healthy and that dragged from one side to the other.” “. No score can adequately explain these health problems.
Ten of the 18 teams won the title, so preparation has little to do with the dignity of the championship.
Many of these teams were monsters. Eleven of them won 62 or more games, including the 1985 Lakers (65-17), 1986 Celtics (67-15), 2013 Heat (66-16) and 2016 Warriors (73-9). They were handing out a lot of regular season losses to their conference brethren, and they earned the easy way out.
The opposite occurs with equipment that travels on more difficult roads. The eight toughest paths to the NBA Finals include the sixth-seeded 1995 Rockets and the fifth-seeded 2020 Heat, two of the lowest four seeds to ever reach the title series. Higher seeds face teams with fewer wins; The lowest ranked teams face teams with more wins. So it stands to reason that the Celtics, who have won 64 games and won 14 more games than any team in the conference, face an easier schedule. That list of more difficult paths, by the way:
EQUIPMENT | ROUND 1 | ROUND 2 | ROUND 3 | AVERAGE. WIN |
Magic 2009 | Medical information (41-41) | BOS (62-20) | CLÉ (66-16) | 56.3 |
1995 rockets | UTA (60-22) | PHX (47-35) | SAS (62-20) | 56.3 |
Heat 2020 | IND (45-28) | THOUSAND (56-17) | BOS (48-24) | 56* |
2002 Lakers | BY (49) | SAS (58-24) | SACK (61-21) | 56 |
2010 Celts | Missing (47-35) | CLÉ (61-21) | ENT (59-23) | 55.7 |
mavs 2006 | MEM (49-33) | SAS (63-19) | PHX (54-28) | 55.3 |
2005 spurs | Living room (49-33) | SEA (52-30) | PHX (62-20) | 54.3 |
2001 Lakers | BY (50-32) | SACK (55-27) | SAS (58-24) | 54.3 |
Either or both of this year’s (fifth-seeded) Mavericks and this year’s (sixth-seeded) Pacers could join that list of toughest paths to the NBA Finals. While Indiana trails its series against Boston, 2-0, Dallas leads the Western Conference finals by the same margin against the Minnesota Timberwolves after a thrilling victory in Game 2.
If the Mavericks win this season, we’ll applaud their difficult path to the ring, but that story would be lost to time once we begin the legacy-based discussion about when Luka Dončić officially arrived.
We generally understand that the West was a challenge in the 2000s, but no one is having a meaningful conversation now about how tough the sledding was for those Lakers of the early 2000s. We talk about the dominance of Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal and of one of the worst officiated games in NBA history (Game 6 of the 2002 Western Conference Finals) and its relationship to the league’s officiating scandal.
Every champion has their story, and there’s a chance the cupcakes will go the way of Boston this season. That will depend on how the Celtics’ path plays out from here. Do the Timberwolves or the Mavericks represent a worthy threat in the next round? Could Jayson Tatum capture the Finals MVP in convincing fashion, sealing his place in Celtics history? If Kristaps Porziņģis never recovers and Boston still wins, are we having a different health discussion? What happens if the Celtics repeat in the future and become a dynasty of their own?
The calendar is the story of Boston right now. It may not be in two weeks. It won’t be in two years, unless they fail to win and this group is still looking for its first title. Then they will be the eternal bridesmaids who couldn’t even finish the work when most of the work was done due to injury and chance.
Here’s what we know right now: These Celtics are one of the few teams who never had to face a 50-win opponent on their way to the NBA Finals, and if Haliburton can’t return, they’d be the only one to make it . beat those opponents without their best player on the court in any of the series’ deciding games.
Perhaps even luckier for them are the injuries that took these Celtics to the Heat, the Cavaliers and the Pacers. Indiana beat Milwaukee without Giannis Antetokounmpo and New York without half its rotation. Joel Embiid’s knee injury affected Philadelphia’s seeding and ability to get out of the first round.
Injuries are part of the process. Nobody remembers that the 1985 Lakers beat the Phoenix Suns without their three best players in the first round, even though Bob McAdoo of Los Angeles said during the series: “I’m not going to sit here and be political and say, ‘Oh, ‘We have a great team,’ because they don’t have Walter Davis, James Edwards and Larry Nance. Without those players, we should be left with this.”
An excerpt from a UPI article about those same Lakers Western Conference Finals against Denver: “(Alex) English isn’t the only injured Nugget, just the most seriously injured. The others are Calvin Natt, Mike Evans and Lafayette Lever with knee injuries, Dan Issel with a bruised thigh and Wayne Cooper with a rib injury. However, all we talk about is how the Lakers got revenge on the Celtics in the 1985 NBA Finals.
We don’t need decades to pass to forget the path to a championship. Is anyone arguing that the 2022 Warriors beat the Nuggets without Jamal Murray, the Grizzlies without Ja Morant, and the Mavericks with a diminished Dončić? No, they taught the Celtics a lesson in the NBA Finals and restored their dynasty.
Last year, Denver defeated the Timberwolves without Jaden McDaniels and Naz Reid, the Suns without Chris Paul for four games and Deandre Ayton for the decider, and the Lakers with LeBron James because of a foot injury that two doctors apparently said that he needed surgery. We instantly identified Nikola Jokić as an all-time great and the Nuggets as a potential dynasty.
It seems like the only absence we really discuss is Jordan’s in the mid-1990s, when his baseball career opened a championship window for the Rockets. Heck, we even discredited Orlando’s run to the 1995 NBA Finals, even though Jordan was on the court for the entire six-game series. Maybe it’s all mystical.
Maybe it’s just the stories we tell. But a champion is a champion, and Boston will be a champion if it is.
Keynote USA
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