Sports

The Celtics meet their most difficult playoff challenge in the Warriors

By JAIME C. HARRIS AmNews Sports Editor

The Boston Celtics have demonstrated toughness, resilience, elite young talent and highly competent leadership guided by firstyear head coach Ime Udoka in reaching the NBA Finals. Their victories over the Brooklyn Nets, Milwaukee Bucks and Miami Heat in succession should not be minimized, but all of those teams had glaring flaws and or injuries that the Celtics opportunistically exploited.

Stephen Curry and the Golden State Warriors are a different beast. With Game 1 of the NBA Finals starting tonight in San Francisco, the Celtics must contend with a three-time NBA champion with a wealth of experience and supreme ability who are on a mission to indelibly etch themselves among some of the league’s great historical dynasties. Although the Celtics can light up a scoreboard, with two of the planet’s best wing players in All-NBA First Team selection Jayson Tatum and All-Star Jaylen Brown, capable of generating 30- and 40-plus point games, their calling card is defense. Undoubtedly they’ll need an all-time great series on that end of the floor to defeat a Warriors team replete with lethal shooters and athletic slashers that put relentless mental and physical pressure on opponents.

The Celtics’ aggressive switching defense, spearheaded by 6-foot-4 guard Marcus Smart, the 2022 NBA Defensive Player of the Year, bodied up Kevin Durant in their opening round series versus the Nets and forced one of the most unstoppable scorers in the league’s 75 years of existence into shooting 38.6% overall and 33.3% on 3-point attempts in sweeping Brooklyn 4-0.

While the Bucks’ Giannis Antetokounmpo imposed his will and massive skillset on the Celtics, becoming the first player ever to attain 200 or more points, 100 or more rebounds and 50 or more assists in a playoff series, Boston matched the 6-foot-11, 250 pound forward’s punishing physicality, and by Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Finals, a 109-81 win to advance to conference finals, had exhausted the two-time league most valuable player and 2021 NBA Finals MVP.

The Celtics’ meeting with the Heat was a battle of attrition with both teams enduring injuries to multiple players. But the Heat’s loss of NBA Sixth Man of the Year Tyler Herro—their second leading scorer during the regular season at 20.7 points per game—to a groin injury that kept him out of Games 4, 5 and 6, and confined the shooting guard to only seven minutes in Game 7, was too much to overcome against the Celtics’ taxing on ball compression.

Even Butler authoring a remarkable legacy defining performance in the series, nearly single-handedly dragging his team past the Celtics with 47 points in Game 6 and 35 in Game 7, wasn’t sufficient. Now the Celtics are confronted with a conundrum.

They eliminated a Bucks and Heat team with only one consistent offensive threat each. The Warriors come at opponents in waves with Curry, Andrew Wiggins, Klay Thompson, and Jordan Poole doing damage from every sector of the court, constantly cutting, slashing and hitting unguardable long range bombs. With forward Draymond Green serving as the orchestrator, the Warriors’ offense is a basketball symphony.

While they are turnover prone, Boston must convert those mistakes into points. Additionally, while much plaudits are given to the Warriors’ offense, they are one of the best defensive teams in the NBA applying both analytics and the eye-test. The pick here is Warriors in six.

Boston Celtics head coach Ime Udoka and All-NBA First Team forward Jayson Tatum will face their toughest test of the postseason in the Golden State Warriors (Bill Moore photo)

Facing the Celtics, Curry and Thompson chase their fourth NBA title

By VINCENT DAVIS

Special to the AmNews

Game 1 of the NBA Finals tonight in San Francisco begins the conclusion of the league’s 75th season. The Golden State Warriors of the Western Conference and the Boston Celtics of the Eastern Conference will collide in a best-of-seven series that features some of the sport’s brightest stars. Names such as the Warriors’ Stephen Curry and the Celtics’ Jayson Tatum ring loudly among followers of the NBA.

The Warriors reached this stage by defeating the Dallas Mavericks 4-1 in the Western Conference Finals and will be making their sixth appearance in the NBA Finals in the last eight seasons. Golden State’s gentleman’s sweep of the Mavs was the third leg of the playoffs after their victories over the Denver Nuggets in five games and the Memphis Grizzlies in six.

During the regular season, the Warriors and Celtics squared off twice. The first game was Dec. 12 in Boston, a narrow 111-107 Warriors’ win. The rematch was at Golden State on March 16, a 110-88 Celtics’ blow out. Curry sustained a sprained ligament in his left foot in the March meeting and was sidelined for the last 12 games of the regular season.

The Warriors entered the playoffs as the No. 3 seed in the West and have looked like the best team in basketball. They are positioned to extend what has become a dynasty under their head coach Steve Kerr, who has been leading them since May of 2014. They won titles in 2015, 2017 and 2018, and lost in the Finals in 2016 and 2019.

But Curry, the consensus best shooter to ever play the game, has been the driving force of the Warriors’ success. He topped the team in scoring in four of the five games against the Mavericks and will be relied upon to disrupt the Celtics’ smothering defense. He has a great deal of help, including longtime running mate Klay Thompson.

Thompson closed out Game 5 of the West finals with a 32-point game performance, netting 19 in the first half. It was an emotional night for Thompson, who fought back from a torn ACL in his left knee on June 13, 2019, in Game 6 of the NBA Finals, and an Achilles tendon injury which happened in a pickup game in the fall of 2020. He did not return to play an NBA game until Jan. 9 of this year, missing over two and a half years.

“It’s hard to put into words,” said Thompson after the Warriors eliminated the Mavericks. “This time last year, I was just starting to jog again, and get up and down the court. Now, to be feeling like myself, feeling explosive, feeling sure in my movements, I’m just grateful.”

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