Kurtenbach: I wanted to pick the Celtics, but Steph Curry and the Warriors will win the NBA Finals

I hate when pundits and prognosticators pick a team to win a series in seven games.

They might as well not make a prediction. In such a scenario, there’s nothing between the teams, meaning there’s effectively no liability if the predictor chose the wrong team.

So I’m picking the Warriors to win the NBA Finals over the Boston Celtics… in seven games.

Hold on! Let me explain! I swear this isn’t a cop-out.

I’ve long held that Boston is the worst possible NBA Finals matchup for the Warriors. My gut reaction to this possible showdown — my take before I re-watched a dozen games and spent hours looking at various spreadsheets — was Boston in 6.

I’ll explain the ins and outs of why (yet again) in a moment.

But I can’t overlook the last two games of Boston’s Eastern Conference Finals win over the Miami Heat.

Boston was begging Miami to take away the burden of victory. They choked away Game 6 and nearly had an epic collapse at the end of Game 7.

Temperament is a huge factor in the postseason, and if Boston was cracking in the conference Finals, what will happen when they reach the big show, where no one on their team has played a single game?

There are so many good reasons to pick Boston in this series. Too many to overlook.

And the simplistic way to balance these factors is to put it all on the line in a winner-take-all game.

Now that’s a spot where temperament is important. One could even allege that “Championship DNA” would be necessary to win in a Game 7.

Do the Warriors have any of that?

Yes, the Warriors in 7 is the pick. Their experience puts them over.

But that’s the easy way of looking at it. Here’s the complicated one:

The Switch

No team in the NBA switches on defense quite like the Celtics.

If you’re a Warriors fan who enjoys the chess match of basketball, that sentence should rattle you to your core.

Boston is long, strong, smart (no pun intended), and willing to mix and match. Most importantly, they’re sticky. That style of defense is built to stymie the Warriors’ motion offense, which uses off-ball screens and cuts to create open looks.

Two of the Warriors’ greatest foils during their dynastic run — the Cleveland Cavaliers and Houston Rockets — have used switch-everything defenses to slow down Golden State. The Cavs even won a series against the Dubs, coming back from a 3-1 deficit in the 2016 NBA Finals — a turnaround that had many factors but coincided, directly, with Cleveland coach Ty Lue deciding to throw caution to the wind and embrace complete switching. That’s how you end up with Kevin Love getting the big stop on Steph Curry (and his balky knee) in Game 7 of that series.

The Warriors have shown the ability to score at all three levels — paint, mid-range, and beyond the arc — this postseason, but Boston has proven itself to be the only team in the league that can defend at a high level at all three of those levels.

A huge factor in this series will be Boston’s rim protection. The Warriors didn’t face a lick of it against the Dallas Mavericks in the Western Conference Finals — when they weren’t making shots they could go to the hoop with impunity. But we saw how Memphis’ big men could affect the Dubs’ attack in the prior round. It was a problem.

Al Horford and the Celtics wings do a really good job of protecting the rim for non-traditional paint protectors, but if Boston has Robert Williams III — the Timelord — in the paint, their defense goes from good to great.

After the All-Star Game, when the Celtics really started to roll, Williams’ rim protection was a level beyond elite. Teams shot 17 percent worse from 6 feet and in when he was on the floor, and nearly 20 percent worse from inside of 10 feet.

Williams in the paint turned the highest-percentage shots on the floor into attempts that go in well less than half the time. That’s insanity.

But Williams has a sore left knee that he’s fought with all postseason and will certainly be dealing with come the Finals. He only played 15 relatively ineffective minutes in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Finals.

With Boston’s tenacity on the perimeter and length in the mid-range, having Williams’ 7-foot-6 wingspan at the basket will tell us so much of what will happen in this series.

The core tenet

There is another effective way to attack a defense like Boston’s:

Never let it set up.

The Warriors are at their best when they turn defense into offense. That is creating turnovers that create fast-break opportunities or pushing off missed baskets.

This is how the Warriors control the pace and, so often, the game.

And this is the biggest advantage for the Warriors in this series outside of experience.

Boston can push the pace a bit on offense. We will get some wild back-and-forth action in this series, which is great.

But the Celtics can also jam up on offense with stunning ease.

Boston has two wings — Tatum and Jaylen Brown — who can create their own shot off the dribble. And while Marcus Smart is a brilliant player (and flopper) he isn’t a pure operator of a point guard and his jump shot is horrid.

The Celtics can be beautiful on offense. They can really whip around the ball and Tatum and Brown’s penetrate-and-kick game is great.

But pair this team’s youth and the stage, and Boston has been searching on the offensive end this postseason quite often. That usually ends with Tatum or Brown taking an ill-advised, defended shot late in the shot clock.

And with Boston being an average rebounding team at best, that means the Dubs will have ample opportunity to run.

When the Warriors run, the Warriors win.

It won’t be every night. Tatum is a generational talent. Brown will have good games. Smart might even knock down a few shots.

But if Draymond Green — Golden State’s ace defender and de-facto point guard — is on his A-game, the Warriors will be able to push the pace in this series and control the pace of games.

And if you control the pace, you control the series.

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/hMyI1RG