This will be the fourth NBA championship for Stephen Curry or the first for Jason Tatum. It will be a story of a return for centuries for Clay Thompson or a fabulous ending to the debut of the first coach Name Udoka.
Much is at stake in the 2022 NBA Finals for the Golden State and the Boston Celtics, two teams that have something to prove. For Golden State, this is a chance to counter the odds against a renaissance of the dynasty after two seasons away from the spotlight. For Boston and its rising star cast, this is how it is said when legends are created.
Here’s what to expect in the NBA Finals, which begin Thursday in San Francisco.
Third-placed Golden State has a home advantage over second-placed Boston because of its better regular-season record.
Experience may not be everything.
After the Boston Celtics won Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Finals, their words about getting Golden State to the NBA Finals conveyed a mixture of confidence and respect.
“We know we will face a great team with the Warriors. Great players, great organization, “said Celtics guard Marcus Smart. “They have experience to prove it. They know exactly what is needed. They were here. They are veterinarians. We know we have a long way to go, but we are ready for the challenge. “
These finals are marked by a gap in experience, with one team well experienced in championship basketball and another full of newcomers at this stage. Golden State has five players who have competed in several finals – Stephen Curry, Draymond Green, Clay Thompson, Caven Looney and Andre Iguodala. The Celtics don’t have players who have come this far before.
Part of this is a function of age. Boston’s list is full of players in their 20s, while Golden State is a group of 30-year-olds whose lives have changed since their first appearances in the finals.
“Just to be able to balance even just family life,” Curry said after Game 5 of the Western Conference Finals. “I am blessed to have children who are now 9, 6 and 3. For example, when I came back in ’14, ’15, I was chasing these playoffs, just a different mood about everything that happens in life.
Smart was a 21-year-old rookie in 2015, the first time Curry, Green and Thompson won the NBA Championship. Jason Tatum, who was named the most valuable player in this year’s Eastern Conference finals, was in 11th grade. Their teammate, Jaylan Brown, had just graduated from high school and set out to play basketball at the University of California, Berkeley, just 11 miles from where Golden State was playing at the time.
Until the 2015 championship, with the exception of Looney, who was selected by the Warriors a few weeks after winning the title, all participants in the Golden State return finals had gone through years of spice and early departure from the playoffs.
The Celtics 2021-22 have similarly spent the last few years learning how to win the playoffs and deal with the bitterness of losing. Boston has participated in the playoffs every year since 2015 and reached the conference finals four times.
But the trip to Golden State shows that the experience of the finals is not everything.
When the Warriors won the championship in 2015, they faced the Cleveland Cavaliers, led by LeBron James. James made his fifth consecutive final appearance and sixth overall. But he could not stop Golden State from winning the series in six games.
But James was also relatively new to the team. The depth of Golden State’s experience will help carry the team this month.
Prediction: Golden State at six.
Draymond Green is the “emotional leader” of Golden State.
Stephen Curry is known to have scored more than 3 points in history. Clay Thompson is still enjoying his triumphant return after two disastrous injuries. And Jordan Poole, who came out of the quagmire of the two seasons of Golden State in a dynastic break, is emerging as one of the most dynamic young scorers in the league.
As the Warriors return to the NBA Finals, several players are feeding their series. But is it possible that among all the team’s pyrotechnics, Draymond Green – the team’s highly confident, tormenting referee spokesman – will somehow be ignored? Okay, maybe not. But in his 10th season, Green is making his sixth trip to the finals, and it’s no coincidence. He is a defense-oriented, first force that binds his teammates in more ways than one.
“Our emotional leader,” said coach Steve Kerr.
And Green has rarely, if ever, played better basketball than this postseason. In Golden State’s imminent victory over the Dallas Mavericks in the Western Conference Finals, he collected 17 points, 9 assists and 6 rebounds, shooting 6 of 7 from the field. He defended the violation. He was a threat in defense. He uses five of his six personal fouls.
He also avoided participating in many of the extracurricular programs that had hampered him in the past – at least until after the game, when he talked about facing the Celtics with a bet on the championship. The problem was that the Celtics were still playing against the Miami Heat in the Eastern Conference finals. In fact, the heat will force game 7 before it falls. But according to Green, he was never wrong.
“I thought they were the better team and I was obviously not far off,” Green told KGMZ-FM in San Francisco this week, a radio partner at Golden State.
In a way, Green has been a source of stability for the organization, as the team has worked with injuries in recent seasons. He was a mentor to his younger teammates. He was in uniform when Curry and Thompson were away. He admitted that it was not always easy: he was used to competing in championships and suddenly Golden State had the worst record in the league.
Now, along with Curry and Thompson, Green has another title.
“I can’t say I thought entering this season like ‘Yo, we’re going to win the championship’ or ‘We’re going to be in the NBA Finals,'” Green said. “But I’ve always believed with the three of us that we have a chance.”
Prediction: More relaxed and experienced, Golden State won the series in six games.
They are both great in defense but different in attack.
The relationship between Celtics coach Ime Udoka and Golden State coach Steve Kerr – both former NBA role-players – is numerous. They both led their teams to the finals in their first seasons as head coach, Kerr in 2014-15, when Golden State won the championship, and Udoka this year.
They are also linked to San Antonio Spurs coach Greg Popovic. Udoka was Spurs’ assistant from 2012 to 2019, leading to a championship in 2014. Udoka also played three seasons for the Spurs, while Kerr played four seasons in San Antonio and won two championships. They both worked with Popovic on the US men’s national basketball team.
Popovic’s influence is clear. Udoka and Kerr preach the value of hard protection. Boston and Golden State were the two best defensive teams in the NBA in the regular season. And like Popovic, coaches are ready to publicly criticize players.
Where they diverge is insulting.
Udoka has installed a methodical, slower violation. The Celtics often isolated themselves, ranking near the top of the NBA in the regular season, while Golden State was close to the bottom.
In part, it comes down to the staff: Boston’s two best players, Jason Tatum and Jaylan Brown, were able to get to the edge and break the defense one-on-one, but less in the pass. In addition, the Celtics started Marcus Smart as a point, and he is not a traditional pass-first guard.
Kerr, meanwhile, has long preached an egalitarian violation that depends on the movement of the ball – so much so that Kevin Durant, after leaving the Golden State for the Nets in 2019, complained that Kerr’s violation was limiting. This season, Golden State led the NBA in scoring from the basket, while the Celtics were a little around the league average. Golden State was also second in the league in total passes.
There is another difference. Kerr is more inclined to experiment with compositions. He gave significant minutes to rookies like Moses Moody and Jonathan Cumming, shifting them in and out of the rotation. In the playoffs, Kerr gave the 19-year-old Cumming three starts in the semifinals against the Memphis Grizzlies. Moody, 20, was in the rotation against the Dallas Mavericks in the conference finals.
Udoka has chosen to keep its rotations quite predictable, especially in the playoffs, rarely reaching the Celtics bench even in the event of a foul problem.
Prediction: Celtics at six. Their defense is well designed to pursue Stephen Curry.
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