The NBA Playoffs Make For Interesting Basketball As The Finals Begin

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ESPN

The Conference Finals are now over and the NBA Finals are set. Starting on Thursday, June 2, the #2 seeded Boston Celtics out of the East will face off against the #3 seeded Golden State Warriors out of the West.

Andrew Bernson, Freelancer

The Conference Finals are now over and the NBA Finals are set. 

Starting on Thursday, June 2, the #2 seeded Boston Celtics out of the East will face off against the #3 seeded Golden State Warriors out of the West. The Celtics haven’t made the Finals since 2010 when they lost to the Lakers, while the Warriors last Finals appearance came in 2019 when they fell short to the Raptors. 

But while we wait for the Finals, let’s go over what occurred in the conference championships. 

Starting with the Eastern Conference Finals, the Celtics beat the #1 seeded Miami Heat 4-3 in the entertaining 7-game series. The Celtics led by Jaylen Brown caught a lucky break as many members of the Heat team just fell apart and played poorly. Superstar forward for the Heat, Jimmy Butler, played out of his mind, but it still wasn’t enough for the Heat to come out on top. 

Jayson Tatum, who won the newly implemented Larry Bird Conference Finals MVP, did not deserve this award; Jaylen Brown was absolutely robbed of this award. This isn’t surprising though, because the NBA committee constantly gets these picks wrong, in my opinion.

The Western Conference Finals was the much less entertaining series of the two. 

The Warriors won the series 4-1 in a pretty easy fashion against the #4 seeded Dallas Mavericks. This was expected because the Warriors are a superteam with such stars as Jordan Poole, Draymond Green, Klay Thompson, and Kevon Looney. The Mavericks are a great team but lack a supporting cast around their international superstar, Luka Doncic. 

Only one player can do so much against a remarkable team like the Warriors, with players like Klay Thompson, Draymond Green, and Jordan Poole. The only player who has taken down a superteam of this extent in the past was Lebron James himself in the 2016 Finals. 

Stephen Curry, who won the new Magic Johnson Conference Finals MVP award, did not deserve this as well. Just like Tatum, Curry constantly got outplayed by his fellow peers on the court. The award should have gone to either Kevon Looney or Draymond Green.