![]() Joe Mazzulla went back to the Celtics’ Eastern Conference championship lineup of starting Williams next to Al Horford in the later stages of the Sixers series, and, obviously, it worked. ![]() He can be much better and I suspect the Heat will need him to be. Strus finished that series shooting 30.3 percent from the field, including 29.2 percent on 3-point attempts. He had two games where he didn’t make a shot and the Celtics blasted the Heat each time. During last season’s Eastern Conference Finals, he made three 3-pointers on three occasions. He commands a lot of defensive attention either way. Strus changes the entire Heat offense when he gets hot. Pretty sure that won’t cut it against Boston. After blitzing the Bucks from deep in the first round, Miami shot just 30.6 percent from behind the arc in the second. The Heat shot 34.4 percent on 3-point attempts during the regular season. King: Tyler Herro’s availability (or lack thereof) stands out as an obvious variable here. I think he is, and he proves it this year, although I suppose that’s a bigger discussion for a different roundtable. If he makes the wrong pass at the wrong time, loses Butler defensively at the worst moment, and the Celtics lose because of it, the questions will return about whether Tatum is ultimately a championship player. However, Tatum can lose the title of BPINTS if he has another one of his occasional bouts with basketball immaturity. Jaylen Brown may have outplayed Tatum down the stretch in the regular season, and the Heat’s meteoric rise in the 2023 playoffs has surely been led by Butler, but Tatum is hotter now and he has more tools to his game. He is coming off arguably the greatest performance in a Game 7 in NBA history (sorry boys and girls, LeBron’s 2016 Game 7 triple-double in the finals against the Warriors, and his 48 minutes in Game 7 against the Celtics in 2018 still rank 1, 2 for me), and is the most dynamic player on either side. The best player heading into this series is Tatum. Anyway, school’s over and I’m not doing homework, I am not looking up what I said last year. Joe Vardon: It’s college graduation season here in Boston - I should know because the hotel prices are absurd. They’ve been much better at taking care of the ball this season, including in the playoffs, but the Heat ain’t the Hawks. It was one major reason the series went seven games. That’s despicable, abominable, whatever word you want to use. The Celtics as a team had a 16.1 percent turnover rate during last season’s Eastern Conference Finals. Can he continue to take care of the ball like that against a Heat defense with toughness, intelligence and the wizardry of Erik Spoelstra? The answer could dictate how the coming series goes. After averaging 4.2 turnovers per game during the playoffs last year, he has only committed 2.3 per game this year. ![]() He has rebounded like an All-Star center throughout the playoffs. I’ll still stick with my pick from when we did this last season: Tatum. Jay King: Butler could absolutely be the best player in the series. Butler at his peak is unmatched, but Tatum should have the bigger aggregate impact on the series. His defense and rebounding have been phenomenal in the postseason, he’s working his way to the line and he every once in a while hits a 3-pointer. Miami only has two defenders (Butler and Caleb Martin) who can keep up with Tatum throughout the night and he’s gotten much better at picking apart zones and traps this year. Butler is getting four days to rest and the Heat hope that’s enough for him to come out on a roll, but the Celtics’ defense is well designed to funnel drivers into the bigs and can mess with Butler’s rhythm better than New York did. That proved to clearly not be the case, as Tatum was good, but Butler was the best player in the league in the few games he was healthy.īut with Butler not being quite as bouncy after rolling his ankle early in the Knicks series, the pick is Tatum. Last year, I picked Jayson Tatum because Butler had an easier path to the conference finals on his individual matchups and I thought Tatum would match up better against Miami’s scheme and personnel than Butler against Boston’s. ![]() He’s been the best wing in the NBA over the playoffs. Coming into Wednesday’s Game 1, Jimmy Butler has been the best player in this series. Jared Weiss: I’m gonna sound like a broken record, but we led this same exact preview a year ago with the exact same question and my answer is about to be exactly the same. To break it all down, The Athletic’s Celtics writers Jared Weiss and Jay King joined national writer Joe Vardon to answer the five biggest questions coming into this series. Four years, three battles, these teams just can’t stay away from each other. Death, taxes, the Celtics and Heat in the conference finals. ![]()
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