To reach the NBA Finals, which begin Thursday night against the Dallas Mavericks at TD Garden, the Boston Celtics missed nearly every major star the Eastern Conference had to offer, either in part or in full. whole.
The Celtics were able to avoid the Milwaukee Bucks and superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo. They avoided the Philadelphia 76ers and superstar Joel Embiid. The same goes for the New York Knicks and Jalen Brunson.
By standings and games lost due to opponent injuries, Boston enjoyed the easiest path to an NBA Finals appearance in the last 25 years, according to a statistical analysis by The Athletic. Needing 14 games to advance in the Eastern Conference, Boston’s opponents missed an All-Star Game in nine of them. On paper, the best team they’ve faced to this point is a Cleveland Cavaliers team that’s without Donovan Mitchell and Jarrett Allen for most of the five-game semifinal series.
This is important because it puts the onus on the Celtics to validate how good they have been this year. At least for Boston, this season has been NBA title or bust. And, like it or not, history won’t remember this Boston team for its eye-popping regular-season win total or its postseason blowouts. Ultimately, history will remember Boston for what it does against a Dallas team that has been a juggernaut since the trade deadline in February, thanks to the additions of PJ Washington and Daniel Gafford.
If the Celtics beat Dallas, history will remember them kindly decades from now. This is a team that won 64 games this season. The Celtics had the best offense in the league this year. They were also one of the top five defenses in the NBA. They were dominant in the regular season and they have been dominant in the playoffs, despite how easy their path has been statistically for the latter.
An NBA title would only confirm what the numbers have said for the past eight months: Boston has been the best team in the league since the word “Go.” But that’s where the tricky part of this comes in. Even with Boston sweeping the Indiana Pacers in the Eastern Conference Finals and beating the Miami Heat and Cleveland Cavaliers in five games each, the eye test hasn’t always matched the analysis. Despite two men’s sweeps and one royal sweep, Boston has had its share of moments where it has looked vulnerable, almost dull. And the fact is that the Mavericks are far superior, deeper, more talented and simply better than any other team the Celtics have faced this postseason.
For the first time in these playoffs, the Celtics will not have the best player in a series. That honor goes to All-NBA Dallas guard Luka Dončić. And for the first time this postseason, the Celtics will face a healthy basketball team. When they reached the 2022 NBA Finals against the Golden State Warriors, Boston was arguably the better team with a better, deeper roster, but the Celtics came up short because eventual Finals MVP Stephen Curry took over the series. Boston wouldn’t get as much grace if the Celtics don’t make it this time. Remember: the Celtics were historically dominant this season. They have a great roster on paper, and this roster has more collective experience at this level of basketball than Dallas’.
To be clear, having an easy path to the Finals is not a knock for Boston. You play with who is in front of you. The Celtics have been the best team in the league all season. They have one of the best starting lineups in the NBA when Kristaps Porziņģis is healthy. Jayson Tatum has been fantastic and rightfully earned another first-team All-NBA selection, and Jaylen Brown has been playing some of the best basketball of his NBA career.
The study by James Jackson of The Athletic shows that multiple dominant teams over the last 25 years have faced similar paths, but we don’t question most of their paths because… they were undeniably dominant and finished the job of winning an NBA championship .
The 2001 Los Angeles Lakers and the 2017 Golden State Warriors are examples of this. Neither faced difficulties on their respective paths to the championship. But what we remember about that Lakers team is how good Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal were. What we remember about that Warriors team is that they were practically one of the three best teams in NBA history. Their ways were easy in large part because they made them easy. They were levels above the rest of the league in those seasons. This was known on paper, and those teams demonstrated it on the court with a level of talent combined with a killer instinct that ultimately made them unbeatable.
Boston’s challenge, in this sense, is to win a championship, which would erase any lingering doubts about how good this season has been. You can argue that right now we don’t know, from a playoff standpoint, how good the Celtics are. Their five-game first-round series win over the Heat? Jimmy Butler didn’t play a single second of that series. Boston beat Cleveland in the second round without, for the most part, having to face Mitchell and Allen. The Celtics’ last two wins over the Pacers came without facing All-NBA guard Tyrese Haliburton.
In terms of All-Star opponent absences, the 2024 Celtics enter the Finals with the second-most absences of any Finals team since 1999 (nine). During that span, only four other teams (2017 Warriors, 2001 Lakers, 2017 Cavaliers, 2016 Cavaliers) entered the Finals with a higher point differential than this season’s Celtics. Additionally, Boston’s opponents before the Finals had more All-Star absences than the other four teams combined (eight).
If Boston’s opposing teams had been healthy, would the Celtics play Thursday night in Game 1? Probably. But whether you agree or not, there is pressure for the Celtics to finish the job this season. That detail adds intrigue to their matchup against the Mavericks because Dallas absolutely can win this series if Boston plays down the competition like it did even at times in the first three rounds or during previous playoff runs.
In retrospect, we know that the 2004 champion Detroit Pistons were the best team in that postseason. However, in real time, it was a shock to see them dominate a star-studded Los Angeles Lakers team that none of us knew at the time was about to fall off the cliff as a championship-caliber team. In 2008, the 66-win Boston Celtics beat the Lakers in six games to win a title and were clearly the best team in the league from start to finish. For the 2020 title, the Lakers began the season winning 17 of their first 19 games. By resuming basketball in the COVID-19 bubble, the Lakers capped it off with a title run to prove they were the best team in the NBA all season. For comparison, the 2024 Celtics’ path to the Finals has been similar to that of the 2016 and 2017 Cavaliers, who maintained a double-digit point differential while essentially sleepwalking through the East.
Such luck has not been foreign to the Celtics since Tatum or Brown joined the franchise. This will be their second appearance together in the NBA Finals. The duo has dominated the Eastern Conference since James headed West in 2019. In that time, Boston (.656) trails only Milwaukee (.665) for the NBA’s highest winning percentage and has nine more wins in playoffs than any team in the league (48). nine behind second place, Miami). Four of the next seven teams on that list have playoff wins since James’ departure from the Eastern Conference five years ago, including his aforementioned 2020 Lakers.
The Celtics will enter these Finals with the best regular-season winning percentage of any Eastern Conference team since the 2013 Heat. They have the best roster, top-tier talent and previous playoff experience to capture the championship trophy. Now, however, Boston has more pressure than ever to do so.
(Top photo: Dylan Buell//Keynote USA/Getty Images)
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