Welcome to the NBA’s second season! Everything your team has done for the past 6 months can be thrown out the window, it all comes down to who can win 4 games first and then who can do that over and over for two grueling months of basketball. There is one team that doesn’t seem to be getting enough respect whom I believe can make some noise in the (at least early) Playoffs – the Boston Celtics.
If you read that last line and said “Wait the Celtics!? They aren’t even going to win a series!” you are absolutely right. The Celtics are not going to win the series against the Cavs, but they are going to make every game an absolute dog fight.
The Celtics have a couple of match up advantages in this series that should make every game an interesting chess match. First and foremost the coaching match up is heavily in the Celtics favor and that is more of a compliment to Brad Stevens than an insult to David Blatt. Remember this Celtic team was supposed to be tanking! They traded their best player in December in hopes of entering the lottery, but Stevens wouldn’t let it happen. Stevens was the coach of the back to back National Runner Up teams at Butler, always over preforming with inferior talent and this season in Boston has kept to that narrative. Look for Stevens to run a lot of set plays out of time outs and inbound passes near the Celtics offensive basket that takes advantage of a poor and sometimes lackadaisical Cleveland defense.
Stevens should be able to employ a guard heavy game plan throwing defensive specialist Avery Bradley and Rookie of the Year finalist Marcus Smart at Kyrie Irving in waves. Frustrating Iriving in his first playoff series should be task number one on the Celtics to do list. They also have the flexibility down low with Brandon Bass, Kelly Olynyk, and even Jonas Jerebko in stints, to guard Kevin Love and the Cavs stretch lineups. If they can throw Irving and Love off of their game early in what will be their first playoff series they could steal a game in Cleveland.
The Celtics also have the biggest X-factor in the series: Isaiah Thomas. Thomas has that look of “one night I am going to feed off the Boston crowd and go absolutely bananas and win a playoff game myself”. The reason he has seen the success he has with Boston is his team’s ability to have Bradley guard the best offensive back court threat and hide Thomas. With Thomas having to shadow whoever is the least threatening guard the entire series his offensive prowess should flourish whether he is being guarded by Irving, JR Smith…basically anyone but Lebron.
All that being said the Cavs still have the best basketball player in the world and usually in the NBA playoffs the team with the best players wins the series, but watch out for the Celtics to steal an early game and put the pressure on Lebron and co.