‹‹‹‹ 2022 NBA Finals ›‹ Celtics vs Warriors ›‹ The ILH Bowl ››››

seems to be where the playoffs always ends up

dubs need to figure out a way to play rob off the court cos he was causing havoc around the rim last time they played. negated a lot of poole drives, similar to how jjj did. guarding poole with length seems to work well. both teams have good small ball lineups so it will be cool to see who gets the edge there.

OTM, Rob can give them hell. They haven't faced a player like him this playoffs.
Kuminga has had decent success guarding Tatum this season (small sample size obv) but he's also foul-prone and sloppy with the ball, which they can't afford to be against Boston. It'll be interesting to see if Moody can continue to earn effective minutes.
Dubs in 7 with each team taking a road game.

moody and kuminga wont play much (or at all) unless gp2, iggy or otto miss time (or if they look bad on their return)

switching is OP

I have a hard time seeing GPII get his stroke back quickly or Iggy providing much value at this point, unless he shows more willingness and ability to shoot. Who knows, though, maybe Iggy's been saving it all up the last three seasons for this moment.

Andre Iguodala, Gary Payton II and Otto Porter Jr. worked out but did not participate in Warriors scrimmage today, per coach Steve Kerr. Availability for G1 Thursday still TBD.

— Monte Poole (@MontePooleNBCS) May 30, 2022

I'm going with dubs in 5. Probably wrong but they are pretty-much full-strength now and they want it so so bad. They have way more finals experience (including their coach, who has been to the finals a few times, vs a rookie), and while the Cs are good at defense, I don't think they've had a lot of experience having to guard 4 elite shooters at once. There will probably be one day where their shooting disappears and they can't make it up in the paint, but I can't see that happening 4 times.

did the dubs pick up another shooter lol

another two shooters

poole wiggins otto are all very capable

poole has been excellent this year afaict

theyre fine i mean theyre all fine wiggins is a career 35% shooter from three hes fine

you do have to guard him you have to guard all of them but are they going to totally roast you well probably not

there are two guys on the warriors who you say a little prayer whenever they get the smallest window to hoist

elite guys if you will

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i'm obligated to take c's in 7. this is going to be really interesting--the celtics have the best defensive backcourt in the nba yet have had to spend these playoffs gaming for durant, giannis, and butler. put up or shut up time against curry, klay, and poole. on the other hand the warriors have played against a defense remotely like this and it's worth filing away that memphis stressed them a little bit with some talent, but a lot more effort and energy. they're going to need to find a different gear to run their stuff against boston.

i'm very torn on what rob williams means to this series. he can definitely disrupt drives but still gets lost against teams that move the ball effectively. on offense if healthy he could really punish golden state with his verticality at the rim, they have no one who's going to do anything about that. the warriors swing guy is probably poole--definitely a player type that can give the celtics trouble but they could hunt him on the other end.

health will obviously be critical, i'm hoping marcus and rob are moving a bit better and while the warriors injuries are with their role players every little bit counts at this point. i don't see the return of iguodala or payton being meaningful--if they do come back they'll most likely be limited in one way or another.

i hope this is close and fun, everyone deserves that.

i hope its close and fun but the celtics winning easily would be fine too

Question from a baseball fan. I assume because of Nate Silver's involvement, the projections on 538 are analytics-based. They have the Celtics at 83% to win the series (they've been projecting the Celtics to win for many months), which I find really surprising. Is this the equivalent of an old-school/analytics argument in baseball, where the Warriors have so-called intangibles on their side (experience, history, comeback narrative), while the Celtics are the obvious favourite if you don't believe in that stuff?

i don't think the statistical case for the celtics is nearly as strong as that projection would claim. they've been the statistical best team in basketball for a while now but the warriors are right up there too. their offense has been lethal when they avoid turnovers.

the type of intangibles you're talking about also aren't really a thing at this point in the playoffs, both teams have been through a gauntlet to get here and i think most would agree that the celtics have had a harder path.

I think the reason why most ILHers have picked the Celtics is that in a seven game series the best team, or at least the best team in aggregate after injuries are taken into account, will win about 80% of the time. The need to win four reduces variance quite a bit. The margin between teams needs to be extremely thin to make a seven game series a total toss up. Going in, the C's look a bit stronger in their match-ups, but it should be a closely contested series, either 6 or 7 games. And hella fun!

well in general if you like the road team you should pick them in 6 but this particular celtics team seems to operate differently

celtics have tried more threes in the 2022 playoffs than GS have :o

a lot of that probably has to do with playing the bucks but still

538 likes the celtics prob cause they were by the numbers pretty clearly the best team for the second half of the regular season, the regular season can be deceiving in basketball tho, most close nba watchers had them as a contender in a crowded field of contenders which turned out to be more accurate than 538 seeing them as dominant, likewise 538 has them as big faves to win this series where its prob pretty much a toss up, tho i guess you do have to give 538 credit despite being a bizarre site by and for deranged weirdos for liking the celtics more than the average casual fan who didnt really see them as contenders at all

I would also say, Clemenza, relative to a sport like baseball, how teams match up against each other is a much, much bigger factor in basketball. Ergo much harder to use the data of previous performance against other teams to make those kinds of predictions. That said, the Celtics have famously played the Warriors well for the past several years. I believe I saw a tweet that they are the only team in the NBA with a winning record against them over the past 8 years or something(?!). On the other hand, they have of course never met in the playoffs and - again, different from other sports - the playoffs really are a whole different game. In a regular season matchup the Warriors aren't going to switch up their whole style of play from game to game, but in the playoffs you can (try to) mold your whole thing to take advantage of your opponent, as they do the same to you. That's why hoops are the best baby

yeah in the warriors famous 73-9 season the celtics had a win and an overtime loss vs them (with a different (much worse) team than the current one mind you)

their prioritization of perimeter defense has kept it a good matchup through roster turnover i guess

it kind of a classic matchup in the san francisco is the boston of the west coast

are you sure it isnt seattle

seattle is just idk what you even do with seattle

give them a basketball team back, for starters

they need to take it lets see something from the city of seattle

how much cooler would the durant-westbrook-harden thunder have been if they had been the seattle supersonics and not the oklahoma city thunder. would presti have gone into the tax to keep harden? would durant have stayed? we can only assume yes to both questions

oh yeah and also they wouldve learned to share the ball and keep harden happy as well, because of seattle chill vibes, another yes.

yeah i think ultimately that trio was just never going to work not enough basketballs

im sure ive posted about it on here before but i was actually a sonics fan as a kid and only switched back to the celtics in 08 when they were finally good at the same time as the sonics died. i am not a pure celtics fan despite living in MA my whole life

the initial celtics pitch when i was first old enough to watch & enjoy basketball was "their star player has died and they are going to be bad for a while" which was not compelling to child me

lmao yeah that was a rough time

awful

fact fans in this thread may want to note that the len bias pick belonged to.... the seattle supersonics before they traded it for gerald henderson and cash

well add to all that the mid90s Sonics were fun as hell, I definitely rocked a Kemp jersey even in a Celtics fan house

kemp was a phenomenon, he transcended team loyalties

oh yeah and also they wouldve learned to share the ball and keep harden happy as well, because of seattle chill vibes, another yes.

Got golden state in 6!

— Jayson Tatum (@jaytatum0) May 28, 2015

At least for the conference finals, 538 had the Mavs as the favorites (maybe even overwhelmingly so) to reach and even win the finals.

that vaguely makes sense to me that hthe same model would like the celtics and mavs

“Analytics darlings”

I'm rooting for the Warriors for an odd reason: when the Raptors won, I really admired that I never heard Curry or any of the Warriors blame or even mention losing Durant and Thompson for the series. Maybe the Raptors would have won anyway, but realistically, probably not. But no one on the Warriors tried to put any kind of a damper on that at all--they let us enjoy that moment 100%.

they are true mensches

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the people have spoken. the series will be won on the road

hmm maybe pritchard can become a good version of pritchard with another year under his belt

― ciderpress, Saturday, 18 June 2022

or they could package pritchard and whatever draft picks they have left for someone who is already good like tyus jones

Steph makes it look easier than any of those guys did.

Take another look at Kareem.

comparing across eras is a suckers game but basically players have never ever been better than they are now

and even ignoring all that steph still wins pound-for-pound

Take another look at Kareem.

Will do!

check out "lebron james"

lol gotta disagree with you there

This clip got me choked up

in the end the boston offense was just too one-dimensional. clearly the lesser team. drive and kick, try to make an extra pass. there wasn't really a plan B. the warriors eventually figured it out in game 4 and the celtics never won again. not sure i totally agree that they need to go out and get a great playmaking point guard but they need a way to create looks for brown and tatum. drive and kick too often meant brown and tatum were passing it out to a lesser scorer - and then hoping the ball swung back to them.

i've heard a couple of times that ime's general plan this season was - play elite, tight d, and on offense "stay loose" and have fun. in a way it's surprising that it worked as well as it did. but it's clearly not enough to win in the finals.

tatum has got to be rattled. i think he made one FG in the entire second half of game 6. ime's take on it is that he's never faced being the center of a defense's attention to this degree. that may be right, but isn't it also the coach's job to create a plan that shakes him loose more?

https://i.imgur.com/oTknznZ.png

the rest of the league has been relegated