5 big questions heading into the NBA Finals
We know who matters most. What's in the air?
Good morning. Free Brittney Griner. Let’s basketball.
Girls of the Bridge, Edvard Munch, 1899
Back in the day at SB Nation, I would sometimes rank the 26-30 rostered players of the two NBA Finals teams in terms of importance. But as Steve Kerr and especially Ime Udoka have turned to tight rotations and we have just a couple of binary injury questions, that’s not too interesting an exercise this year.
So instead, let’s look at three big questions that could help determine how the series goes.
1. Can the Celtics turn over the Warriors?
Boston is getting lots of attention for its stellar defense, and rightly so. I feel as though the fact that Golden State had the No. 2 defense this season — No. 1 until All-Star when the C’s overtook it — is getting dramatically less attention. Mix in that the Celtics’ halfcourt offense can sometimes be, uh, an adventure. This becomes a continued concern then for Boston: to get points on the board against Golden State, transition becomes important, similar to the first quarter of Game 7 vs. Miami.
The Warriors also happen to be prone to fits of weird turnovers. Stephen Curry is a surprisingly bold passer, and Draymond Green can have a multi-turnover quarter at any moment if the offense isn’t quite synced. I tend to think of these spurts less Draymond’s fault and more a fact of the Warriors’ odd machine getting some gunk in the gears. We know Boston can gunk up any machine. So there’s something to watch there.
Points are going to be a premium in this series, just as they were last round. Getting easy ones in transition could really help Boston put numbers on the board. Golden State has to limit to mistakes to prevent that from happening.
2. Can Robert Williams III be impactful?
Timelord remains a riddle: in Game 6 against Miami it felt like his late-game absence was brutal for the Celtics and two days later in Game 7 it felt like his minutes almost killed Boston. He’s clearly not healthy enough to be himself, but is healthy enough to play. Will a couple days of rest be enough to get him right, or is the inconsistent, low-burst version we saw in the ECF what we’re going to get in the Finals?
And why does this matter? Dallas had absolutely no one to make Kevon Looney’s life difficult on the glass or on defense, not with Maxi Kleber spending most of the series off-target. Williams’ vertical dimension and offensive rebounding could put lots of pressure on Looney when it comes to helping toward the wings on dribble penetration, and again, those easier points matter. On the other end, Williams is Boston’s only true rim protector, and Curry in particular has been finding his way to the cup more frequently than you’d expect. If Timelord can play substantial minutes and force Curry to kick on those drives or take more floaters than lay-ups, that’s a win for Boston. If it’s Horford at center, smaller lineups with Grant Williams essentially as the biggest player, or even Daniel Theis out there, the calculus changes on both ends.
3. Can Gary Payton II come back?
This is almost 2b to the Timelord question. GP2 is one of the best perimeter defenders in the league right now. With how Jaylen Brown’s dribble penetration went against Miami, can you imagine GP2’s hands flying in there to knock stuff loose? I’m not sure this swings the series, but it’s an important little subplot. It looks like he’ll be a gametime decision for Thursday. Even if he plays, we’ll need to see him be effective in his role.
4. Who’s getting the shots the defense is forcing, and will they make them?
Miami schemed to let Marcus Smart get a ton of shots, especially in Game 7. Smart led the team in shots. Boston won, leading for the entire game, so the Celtics are fine with it … except it got really hairy in those final 90 seconds because Smart missed every open dagger shot he had.
Will Golden State do the same, sell out against Tatum and make Smart and Grant Williams beat them? Will Boston make Andrew Wiggins beat them, or give Draymond Green space to operate under the belief that they can catch up via rotation? These defenses are really good and really smart, and have objectives they want to it in terms of who is getting the shots. We’ll see the tactics unfold in Game 1 and adjustments from there. But a lot comes down to whether the chosen players make their shots. And that’s unknowable until we see it.
5. Is Jordan Poole ready for this?
To me, Poole is the biggest wildcard in this series.
We have lots of history at this stage with Curry, Green and a version of Thompson. Wiggins showed a complete lack of fear of the moment in his match-up with Luka Doncic. Tatum, Brown, Horford and Smart have somehow been in a couple dozen enormous games despite this being their Finals debut. Maybe the pomp of the Finals, especially starting on the road, gets them a little dizzy for Game 1. It’s fine. The Warriors are 9-0 at home in the playoffs anyway. You can lose Game 1, dismiss the butterflies and come back to win the series. You just won two Game 7s going up against relentless stars in Giannis and Jimmy Butler. You are clearly built for some level of this.
Poole is the single most important player in this series for whom I can’t answer the question of how he’s going to react to this stage. He’s really young and green and has a huge role to play. He has less than 5,000 career minutes, and a third of those came when the Warriors were the worst team in the league in 2019-20. Last season — last season, a year ago — as the Warriors were desperately trying to stay above .500 and make the playoffs (they did not), Poole split time riding Kerr’s bench and playing in the G League with Jeremy Lin and Alen Smailagic. He came on toward the end of last season for the big league Warriors and exploded this season. His arc is impressive but short.
Everything that makes Poole great and exciting to watch is also a little terrifying under a microscope. We got hints of that against Memphis and more hints against Dallas, where the performance was less consistently good. I think Boston is substantially better than Dallas. Smart, in particular, has the potential to try to get in Poole’s head and make him make mistakes on both ends. The learning curve for new players to the Warriors system is famously steep. Poole’s not exactly new, but he’s still learning the ins and outs. Think of the players who have excelled the most as role players in the Steph system: cerebral players like Shaun Livingston, Andre Iguodala, even Otto Porter, Jr. Poole is different. He’s instinct and athleticism and has a scorer’s mentality always. He’s a mug of cold brew concentrate, no water. He’s a variable whose value changes minute to minute, possession to possession.
He might be one of my five favorite players in the entire league to watch right now. (Tentatively, in no particular order: Ja, Giannis, Luka, Poole and either LeBron or Steph.) Poole’s going to be fascinating to watch in these big moments, whether he can stay himself, whether he can avoid getting got by the tricky C’s, whether he can represent for all the dribble-first combo scoring guards the NBA is leaving behind. For what it’s worth, he’s been awesome in each of the Warriors’ three Game 1s this postseason. Whatever he’s been doing this postseason is working. Let’s see if he has one more round left.
Scores
Mystics 87, Fever 75 — Indiana fell apart in the second half, scoring just 29 while giving up 49. Ariel Atkins with 28 for the ‘Stics.
Mercury 70, Sky 73 — Diana Taurasi got ejected fairly early for arguing calls, and the Mercury went on a big run to take a lead. But then the champs came back in the fourth to get the W. I really don’t think anyone can fault anything that happens to the Merc right now.
Sun 81, Aces 89 — A’ja Wilson with a dominant performance against Jonquel Jones. A’ja should probably be the MVP favorite right now.
Wings 91, Sparks 93 — Los Angeles might be figuring it out. I don’t think they are particularly close to the top tier, but it’s heartening to see that they are not bad as they were last season. #analysis
Schedule
All times Eastern.
Lynx at Dream, 7
Fever at Liberty, 7, CBS Sports Network — This might become a disaster if NY loses this. The Lib are currently 1-7 with a brutal -15 points per game scoring margin against an average strength of schedule.
Links
Congratulations to Gary Payton II for winning the NBA Cares Community Assist Award. Great dude doing great things.
Payton II has prioritized engaging with and giving back to his community, particularly through initiatives related to youth with learning disabilities and those dealing with hardship. This season, he founded the GPII Foundation, a nonprofit that acts as a conduit for Dyslexia-awareness, an educational disability he has dealt with throughout his life. The foundation provides funding for educators to become certified in early intervention services and support for students with learning disabilities such as dyslexia, including early screening, detection and certified assessment for youth and young adults.
Payton’s own personal struggle with dyslexia, and his passion and efforts to uplift young people impacted, led to the Warriors expanding their Read to Achieve program to specifically include students with learning disabilities. He also led attended a rally at San Francisco City Hall in support of universal screening for risk of dyslexia via Senate Bill 237 and hosted his first-ever Reading Rally with Decoding Dyslexia for students affected by learning disabilities. Additionally, Payton participated in the Warriors’ Black History Month celebrations and 75th Anniversary Live, Learn or Play Center dedication, among other events. He was awarded the January monthly NBA Cares Community Assist Award presented by Kaiser Permanente.
Reading between the lines of this new report from Woj and Tim MacMahon on Quin Snyder’s future, it would appear that Quin Snyder’s future is not in Utah. You know how I can tell? Because Snyder is under contract for next season yet according to the report Snyder and team management are negotiating whether he’ll coach next season. Typically when a coach is under contract, you don’t have to negotiate to get him to do his job as contracted. From the story:
While talks are described as "good faith" attempts at a resolution that will keep Snyder, discussions with owner Ryan Smith and CEO of basketball operations Danny Ainge have yet to secure the coach's return for next season, sources said.
The Jazz have offered to extend Snyder's current contract, which has two years left, including his option for the 2023-24 season, sources said. The organization would also welcome Snyder simply returning on his current contract for next season, sources said.
It’s June, so this isn’t exactly a holdout, although unlike for players a lot of the coach’s work comes in the summer, especially in the lead-up to the draft and what could be a huge free agency period for the Jazz. I’m curious for someone to tell me why we should treat Snyder differently than 2017 Kyrie Irving or 2021 Ben Simmons here.
Updated mock from Jonathan Givony on ESPN Insider. ($)
Scenes from Seimone Augustus’ jersey retirement ceremony.
David Thorpe in TrueHoop on the Celtics’ defense’s biggest challenge yet. ($)
Always enjoy Marc Stein’s big Tuesday newsletter, including this Finals preview.
And finally: in the context of whether Steph needs a Finals MVP to validate his legacy (no), Draymond says in a podcast Steph got doubled seven times as often as Kevin Durant in the Finals.
Someone snitch-tags KD, who says it’s 100% false. Draymond responds in hilarious fashion.
KD holds his ground. Fin. And now I guarantee that these Twitter fingers are leading to some NBA writer now studying tape or digging into Synergy reports from the 2017-19 Finals to ascertain whether Green was correct. And meanwhile, the subject of this debate is probably filming a segment for his extreme mini-golf network television show with nary a care in the world about his legacy.
Basketball.
Be excellent to each other.
I have hopes the Celtics win in a tense seven games, with two games decided in overtime, no blowouts, each team winning at least one road game.
Too many variables! Draymond and Marcus can steal a win or give it away. Wiggins has the resting heartbeat of a swamp predator - he might swallow a defender whole, or just sun himself on a rock. Klay vs Jaylen! Both have 30 point halves in their bags but have teammates that occasionally forget to say "heyhowyadoin". The bench players all have strengths (please, in the name of Rasheed Wallace will somebody tell Shaq to stop saying "others"), a solid turn from White/Pritchard/Theis or Nemanja/Kuminga/Porter is a thumb on the scale. Even the coaches are a tossup, Kerr has more big games under his belt but Udoka has a lot of serious bench time with quality bosses.