The Celtics and Nets tip-off their first round series at 3:30 EST in Boston after much deliberation over how the two teams landed in the No. 2 and 7 seeds once again to face each other after Brooklyn’s 4-1 series win last spring. The Celtics have flipped to a favorite in the series, despite the Nets opening as one after Brooklyn beat Cleveland in the 7-8 play-in tournament game on Tuesday.
“It was a long shot,” Marcus Smart said on Saturday of last year’s series. “We definitely felt we were just going to go out there and compete. No matter what. We’re down, that’s not an excuse. This year, we’re as healthy as can be with the Rob situation, and eyeing his return. So we’re as healthy as we’ve probably been ever. We’ve been playing some of the best basketball of our careers. Everyone’s confidence is high. We understand we can’t get too high on the highs, too low on the lows. We also understand that we have a great opponent that’s coming in here on Sunday in the first round that all our attention has to go to.”
The Garden Report agrees Boston should win, with all five members picking the Celtics despite weeks of debate over the merits of avoiding the Nets in the first-round series. The difficulty Brooklyn presents is also clear in our predictions, everyone signaling a six-game series. The longer it progresses, the more likely Robert Williams III and Ben Simmons become factors, which makes this an even more difficult matchup to call.
Boston won three of four matchups during the regular season, Sunday’s meeting the first this season with James Harden gone, Williams III unavailable, and both Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant active. Brooklyn’s big three won an early matchup with Williams out, Boston mashed a short-handed Nets team twice on the road in February, then Jayson Tatum scored 54 points and led the Celtics to a win over Durant and Irving in March with Williams active.
A. Sherrod Blakely – Celtics in 6
John Zannis – Celtics in 6
If you want the full reasoning behind my prediction you can click here. In the meantime, you’re all freaking idiots.
I continue to be baffled by the level of irrational confidence Celtics fans seem to have entering this series or that some people (ahem Bobby Manning) preferred Brooklyn as a first round opponent to Toronto.
Sheer lunacy.
The strength of the Celtics this season has been in their starting 5 and that doesn’t exist right now. Not without Robert Williams. The Celtics dominance over the second half of the season, while impressive, doesn’t matter anymore. Not until Rob returns.
Conversely, the Nets aren’t the team that stumbled and bumbled their way into play-in purgatory. If not for Kevin Durant’s injury and Kyrie Irving’s vaccine related early season Brooklyn banishment, the Nets would have contended for one of the top 4 seeds in the East.
Durant is capable of beating any team all by himself. He almost single handedly eliminated the eventual NBA Champs last season. Now he has help in Irving and maybe Ben Simmons as well.
There’s a reason Rob Williams is referred to as a difference maker. Not having him also makes a difference. Without Rob I would bet on Durant and Irving over Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown. Sorry.
However….and maybe it’s just the champagne talking, but I think Williams is going to defy expectations and return sooner than later.
Williams had surgery on his torn left meniscus on March 30. The feeling was he’d be back in 4 weeks, in this case Game 5 of the series.
I think we’ll see him before that.
So my prediction….Rob returns in Game 4 with the Celtics down 2 games to one. They win every game from that point forward.
Josue Pavon – Celtics in 6
Bobby Manning – Celtics in 6
Without understating the tear Durant and Irving are on, both averaging 30 PPG since Durant’s return to the lineup, the Celtics have many more advantages in this series. Tatum and Brown, who didn’t play in last year’s series, spread Brooklyn’s defense thin. Beyond the offensive burden he’s already carrying, Durant will need to guard Tatum more often than he did in Boston’s in March where Tatum went off for 54 points. The Celtics will try again to get Tatum going downhill at Irving and Seth Curry mismatches.
The double teams will inevitably come and force Tatum off the ball, which should open space for Brown to operate as a finisher where he thrived late in the season. The Celtics as a whole shot 39.5% from three from the trade deadline on, Marcus Smart, Al Horford, Derrick White, Grant Williams and Payton Pritchard all becoming comfortable as floor spacers. Boston scored 1.18 points per possession this season, more than Brooklyn did when Durant faced blitzes (1.16). The Nets enter this series with their only conceivable advantage being offense, and the Celtics have functioned at a higher level than them offensively by a wide margin going back to February. Daniel Theis can fill many of Robert Williams’ roles on that end of the floor, with a more versatile scoring game. This is a big series for Grant Williams too, with both players inevitably falling into Durant and Irving’s sight on switches.
Ime Udoka’s strategy to shut off the Bruce Brown, Curry and Drummond impacts should bode well. Durant and Irving’s otherworldly feats of late, including Irving’s 12-for-12 start against Cleveland, warrant giving the Nets the respect of winning multiple games in this series. Winning the entire thing on the backs of two players? The Celtics would need to be complicit in their own demise, and they seem past that point. I feared that becoming an issue in a Toronto series, due to the Raptors’ array of long defenders. Boston should comfortably run offense here.
As for Ben Simmons, it’s hard to imagine a player who hasn’t appeared in a game in one year or played next to his current teammates being the answer for an opponent’s star in the midst of an MVP-level campaign. Playing Simmons could do more harm than good for the Nets, but as vulnerable as they are on the defensive side of the ball it’s not shocking that they’ll try. Boston should win this series, and may do so in quicker fashion than expected if the Celtics are who they’ve shown to be in the second half of the season.
Jimmy Toscano – Celtics in 7
Did the C’s get a tough first-round draw? Yes. After an improbable turnaround to their season and a second-place finish in the East, the C’s are rewarded with … Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving, Durant already considered an all-time great, and Irving one of the best point guards in the league on any given night.
The good news is the Nets don’t have much to offer after them, and to date they don’t seem to care for defense. That could change in the playoffs especially if Ben Simmons musters up the guts to play. All that being said, I’m riding with the more complete team in Boston behind Jayson Tatum, though it will be a battle. Celtics in 7.
