The Boston Celtics Are Winning the NBA Championship (Coming From a Golden State Warriors Bettor)

I just needed the Miami Heat to win. That was all. 

That was my thought process watching Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Finals, clutching onto my Golden State Warriors +650 to win the NBA Finals ticket. And yet, the team that I can’t stand (as a New York Knicks fan), the Boston Celtics, is in the NBA Finals and primed to beat Golden State. 

Yes, you read that right. I am a Golden State Warriors bettor, but I now expect the Celtics to win the NBA Finals. 

Maybe writing this article will serve as a way for the universe to make me wrong and allow my Warriors ticket to cash, but I don’t really believe in jinxes like that. I believe in the fact that the better basketball team will win, and the better basketball team is the Celtics. 

Plain and simple. 

The Celtics’ Defense Will Be Too Much for Golden State

The Warriors have the best offensive rating in the NBA playoffs, but they haven’t faced a team like Celtics on the defensive end. The Celtics had the No. 1 defensive rating in the NBA during the regular season, and they have elite defenders across the board in their rotation. 

The Celtics will have Defensive Player of the Year Marcus Smart to check Steph Curry, and Steph has struggled against Smart in his career. 

The other issue for Golden State will be turnovers, as the team is notoriously sloppy with the ball and is averaging nearly 15 turnovers per game in the playoffs this season. That simply isn’t going to fly against the best defensive team in the NBA. 

Celtics vs. Warriors Key Playoff Metrics

Defensive Rating

• Celtics: 105.1 (No. 2)
• Warriors: 111.0 (No. 6)

Offensive Rating

• Warriors: 116.1 (No. 1)
• Celtics: 111.8 (No. 8)

Pace

• Celtics: 95.92 (No. 7)
• Warriors: 98.44 (No. 5) 

Net Rating

• Celtics: 6.7 (No. 1)
• Warriors: 5.1 (No. 2)

On the surface, these teams look extremely evenly matched, but there’s a reason places like FiveThirtyEight have Boston as an overwhelming favorite to win the NBA Finals. As great as the Warriors are, Boston’s equalizer has been playing suffocating defense and relying on Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown to make big shots. 

Unfortunately for the Warriors, it’s going to take a return from Gary Payton II or Otto Porter Jr. to really throw solid defenders at those two players if Andrew Wiggins is out of the game. Yes, Golden State had the No. 2 defensive rating in the regular season, but it is drastically undersized against Boston when the Celtics play Robert Williams and Al Horford in the same lineup. 

The lack of an inside presence for the Warriors on offense and defense (Kevon Looney and Draymond Green will hold their own defensively, but after it is really shaky), will make defending Tatum and Brown at the rim an absolute nightmare. 

As much as I didn’t want to admit it, I watched Boston run the Milwaukee Bucks out of the gym in Game 7 and dominate the Heat in several games in the Eastern Conference Finals. They are the best team left in the playoffs, and it likely means my Warriors future is going to be dead by mid-June.

Find Peter Dewey’s full betting record here.