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By Ira Kaufman
For the Mirror
I love the NBA playoffs.
Load management (the recent practice of NBA stars sitting out games for "rest") and players missing weeks and months for injuries have impacted the quality of the six-month NBA regular season.
The top teams rarely face each other with a full complement of players. While a seven-game series does not have the instant excitement of the NCAA March Madness' single-elimination tournament, I enjoy watching the game-to-game adjustments teams make in order to win with the required four games.
The 2022 playoffs have produced some huge surprises. The biggest surprise was that the preseason favorite to be the Western Conference representative in the Finals, the Los Angeles Lakers, led by LeBron James, could not even make the playoffs.
The preseason favorite in the East, the Brooklyn Nets, led by Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving, were swept in the first round by the Boston Celtics.
The team the Bucks beat last year in the Finals, the Phoenix Suns, had by far the best record in the regular season, winning nearly 80% of their games but imploded against the Dallas Mavericks and their superstar, Luca Doncic. The Suns' stunning 33-point loss at home in Game 7 is one of the biggest upsets in NBA playoff history.
The Miami Heat were the top seed in the East, but very few experts gave the Heat a chance to make it to the Finals.
I attended all of the Heat's 10 playoff games (against Atlanta, Philadelphia, and Boston) in FTX Arena.
FTX is adjacent to Biscayne Bay, and while you walk around the indoor and outdoor concourses, you can see the cruise ships in the bay.
The playoff atmosphere is electric, as the fans are all dressed in white, and the pyrotechnic machines shoot out Heat flames for the pre-game intros. The Miami-Boston seven-game series was notable for each team blowing out the other in alternating games, and some LeBron-like performances by the Heat star, Jimmy Butler.
In Game 7, the Heat were defeated when they charged back at the end of the game, and Butler just missed a 3-point shot that would have given the Heat the lead in the final seconds.
The Finals of Golden State vs Boston is filled with storylines.
Boston has won a record 17 NBA titles, and Golden State has appeared in six of the last eight Finals.
Steph Curry has won three titles, but not a Finals MVP. Going into the first game of the series, the Warrior players had 123 games of Finals experience while no Celtic player had ever played in the Finals.
It is amazing that the Warriors, just three years after losing Kevin Durant to free agency and having the worst record in the NBA in the 2019-20 season, have returned to the Finals.
Boston's record was just 20-21 in the middle of the season but was able to turn around its season and finished 31-10.
The Celtics' Jason Tatum was selected to the all-NBA first team this year, but teammate Jaylen Brown, while not receiving the same accolades, is Tatum's equal as a player and has led the Celtics to victories throughout the regular season and the playoffs.
In Game 1 of the Finals on Thursday night, Tatum was mired in a horrendous shooting game (3-17 for 12 points), and the Celtics trailed by 12 going into the fourth quarter, but Brown, Al Horford and Derrick White led a historic 40-13 run in the fourth quarter to steal the first game at the Chase Center, the Warriors brand new arena in downtown San Francisco.
The Celtics were the first team to trail a finals game by 10 or more points after three quarters and win by 10 or more.
In order for the Warriors to win this series, they will have to utilize their superior depth and play an up-tempo game to neutralize the Celtics' size advantage, and the Warriors will have to play much better defense.
In Game 1, Boston showed it can win even when Tatum is shooting poorly.
The extra break between the games in the Finals should help the Celtics, but they will have to continue their lights-out shooting from 3-point range in order to become champions.
I am still predicting Golden State will win the championship.
Ira Kaufman, an Altoona native and Mountain Lion graduate, hosts IRA on Sports on trueoldiesfla.com on Monday night from 7-8 p.m. It is also available on Soundcloud & iTUNES, search Ira On Sports. His column appears occasionally in Voice of the Fan.