The hauntings of the NBA Finals

Fourth quarters in Games 1 and 4 are going to make one of these teams seethe for a long time.

Good morning. Free Brittney Griner. Let’s basketball.

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Evening. Melancholy; Edvard Munch; 1891

My man Paul Flannery — formerly a beat writer chasing the Celtics all over this rock we call Earth, formerly a national writer annually covering Finals series in Oakland, now a writer of the great newsletter Running, Probably — texted after Game 4 that the fourth quarter was going to haunt the C’s. And that’s absolutely right: if the Celtics lose this series, the players and staff and fans are going to look at Stephen Curry’s explosion and Boston’s inability to generate good offense against a mostly Draymond Green-less lineup and have a lot of regrets.

Same thing applies to Game 1. It seems like forever ago (it was), but you may recall that the Warriors had a huge lead entering the fourth, almost immediately gave it up, even as Steph came back into the game, and the C’s ran away so far that we got all the way to the other side with a little garbage time in San Francisco. You may remember the name “Al Horford” from that game. If the Warriors end up losing this series, this championship — you can bet that fourth quarter from Game 1 will stick with Curry, the Warriors and their fans. A pivot point in a close series.

This is where you end up in a closely matched Finals series: haunted by the spots in which you came up short, the little ifs, the inexplicable stretches, the random guys getting hot and the important folks going cold. Sometimes these moments of despair will be molded into narratives about the team’s failings, the reasons they are not “championship worthy.” For instance: one narrative rising from the ashes of Game 4 like a finger of smoke is that Boston is too young to close this out. Given how even this series is, I’m skeptical they are too a n y t h i n g to win the series. Same with the Warriors. Someone’s going to win! If the series is close, both teams are worthy. It’s just up to the little edges and luck. Fate, if you’re feeling superstitious.

Athletes and team employees and fans can probably find the hauntings in every series, but it feels rare that both teams have ones of basically equal size as we enter Game 5. We have only gone to seven games in the NBA Finals four times in the past 25 years, last in 2016. Seven feels inevitable here, but in fairness it felt likely last summer too until Giannis Antetokounmpo called down the power of the Basketball Gods to smite the Suns back to the hell from whence they came. Steph is capable of that. The Celtics writ large are capable of that. Crazy things happen in Games 6 too, with the taste of glory so close.

To get there, we have Game 5. 9 PM ET, ABC. Let’s go.