Yahoo Sports Senior NBA Reporter Vincent Goodwill and Senior NBA Reporter Jake Fischer break down the Celtics’ potential path to the NBA Finals and whether they are headed toward the ring or set for a letdown. Listen to the full “Good Word with Goodwill” conversation — part of the “Ball Don’t Lie” podcast — and subscribe at , or wherever you listen.
Video transcript
Boston is on your mind with everything you’ve seen in the playoffs so far.
Are they still the favorites to make the playoffs or are you a little alarmed that you haven’t seen perhaps the more serious approach to play in and out of the game?
I think they’re doing what they did all regular season.
Like they’re going to drop an egg, they’re going to, that’s kind of, they, they don’t have what Denver has in what you said before, they’re not going to beat themselves.
The Celtics won’t beat themselves often.
Jason Tatum said that after the second game he went into some sort of long monologue about how the Celtics don’t necessarily get credit for being a super team because like every time they lose the heavens fall, but they usually respond after that loss and they I liked it, I was really hoping to see one, as healthy as possible.
New York team against Boston.
I really wanted to see Boston face the team I saw playing Philadelphia in the first round.
If we don’t do that, I don’t think Boston will have much of a fight to get to the finals, which is a whole other conversation for sure, they will have won three series to get there.
But if Denver had to come back against a really tough Minnesota team, then they would have to be a really good team to come out of this.
Okc Dallas matchup, which right now, I feel like any of the four teams in the west have already gone through to get there.
Like, you can’t say that about the East and I wonder about setting Boston up for a possible disappointment come Finals time or are they going to be like saving body blows that these other teams are, are, you know, having to suffer through to get to there?
I don’t know, we’ll have to find out.
Me, I think it’s a strange thing.
I think Boston is in a really interesting position because we’ve seen them in different iterations and assumed that every team is the same team and this isn’t the team that made the Finals in ’22.
This isn’t the team that fell apart last year in game seven or in the Eastern Conference finals.
They melted down Game Seven because there was nothing left after that, you know, 30 turnovers against the Miami Heat.
But Christoph Porzingis is in the man, the longer you can hold out without having to push that button and put him back down, the better it is for them, like, whatever else they can get, that’s better for him.
