Cupcake conference or not, the Celtics are incredible

Boston is so good it made the East look softer, and now it's smashing the West champions.

Good morning. Let’s basketball.

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Dynamic Hieroglyphic of the Bal Tabarin; Gino Severini; 1912

The biggest concern about the Celtics’ trade for Kristaps Porzingis last summer was two-fold:

• They had to give up a vital piece of their identity (spiritual and basketball) in Marcus Smart

• Porzingis has historically faced injury absence pretty frequently

Boston recovered on the first note by trading for Jrue Holiday, elevating Derrick White further and from some great individual growth from Jaylen Brown. Porzingis, meanwhile, played 57 games in the regular season as the team was rather conservative with him … but then got injured almost immediately in the playoffs and missed multiple rounds.

After being rumored to return in the East finals but not being needed in a sweep against the Pacers, Porzingis came off the bench in Game 1 of the NBA Finals on Thursday and had a mammoth impact.

For the game, Porzingis had 20 points in 21 minutes, shot 8/13 from the floor, and had six rebounds and three blocks. In the first half, the Celtics won Porzingis’ 13 minutes by 15 points. He was an enormous difference-maker such as the Celtics probably could have won the game without him, but with him it was an 18-point blowout.

Boston went 9-1 to close the East after Porzingis went down against Miami. It did really look like part of that story was the softness of the East, between the seeds that the Celtics drew (due to their own excellent seed, in part) and the injuries that East teams faced. But also, Boston did that without one of their four most important players. Porzingis is the difference between a very good team and one of the best non-Warriors teams of the past decade (right up there with last year’s Nuggets).