The Golden State Warriors Have One Key Advantage Over The Boston Celtics In The NBA Finals

The key stat in the 2022 NBA Finals might not involve field goal percentage or complicated defensive metrics, but a simple counting stat: days off. After finishing off the Dallas Mavericks in five games, the Golden State Warriors earned themselves a full week off before Thursday’s Game 1. Meanwhile, the Boston Celtics needed the full seven games to put away the Miami Heat on Sunday, meaning they just had three nights off to recover. That could end up dooming them.

The Celtics could have made life much easier on themselves during the Eastern Conference Finals, but that simply wouldn’t be them. In an alternate dimension, the Celtics would have taken care of a less-talented Heat team in as few as five games, but they suffered through a series of lousy quarters, questionable decisions making and various mental lapses that a craftier Heat team easily exploited.

Boston infamously won three out of four quarters in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Finals but lost a chance to take a 1-0 series lead in the series by laying an egg in the third. In Game 3, they gifted the Heat a 26-point lead before even beginning to fight back. In Game 6, they lost a chance to end the series then and there when Jimmy Butler carved up the NBA’s best defense up to the tune of 47 points.

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Winning just one of these games would have been huge because both Marcus Smart and Robert Williams have been playing through a series of injuries. An extra two days of rest would have given them precious time to recover before facing a Warriors team that has NBA Finals experience that they lack. Jayson Tatum, Boston’s best player, alone has played 200 more minutes than Golden State’s MVP (Steph Curry, if you had any doubt).

There is good news. In the Steve Kerr era, only one team has a winning record against the Golden State Warriors: the Boston Celtics. In the regular season, the C’s have gone 9-7 against them. Obviously, that “regular season” disclaimer is rather unnecessary here because the only time they would have met in the postseason would have been in the NBA Finals and the Celtics haven’t been in one of those since 2010.

It’s that difference in experience that might be the other thing, beyond rest, that separates these two franchises, who otherwise might be ideal Finals opponents. These Celtics seem not awfully different, at least in terms of roster construction, than the Warriors team that won the Western Conference every year from 2015 to 2019. After the New Big Three era ended, Boston looked to how the Warriors built around a homegrown core of Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green as inspiration.

In rebuilding through drafting—most notoriously by stealing a slate of first-round draft picks from the Brooklyn Nets in exchange for an aging Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett—they have built a team around their young core of Tatum (24), Jaylen Brown (25), Smart (28), Williams (24). The fact that the Celtics have handed contract extensions to all four of them suggests that they believe they can win a championship with them. After all, nothing less will suffice in Boston.

It seems unlikely that this Celtics team is quite prepared to win Banner 18 just yet. The Warriors are a more talented team than the Heat and will not allow them to get away with so many mental mistakes. That said, Boston might be ahead of schedule and these Finals will give them some crucial experience that could pay dividends in the very, very near future.

PREDICTION: Warriors in 6