Common ground
Celtics, Warriors used draft as foundation for talented rosters
SAN FRANCISCO — When Golden State coach Steve Kerr looks at the way the Boston Celtics built a championshipcaliber team, he sees plenty of similarities to how his Warriors got to the NBA Finals in 2015.
Boston built a core through the draft by taking Marcus Smart, Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum during a four-year span from 2014-17, then added the necessary pieces to get over the hump this season and reach the league’s title round for the first time since losing to the Los Angeles Lakers in seven games in 2010.
Waiting for the Celtics in Game 1 on Thursday night will be Kerr’s Warriors, who are making their sixth trip to the NBA Finals in eight years while led by the homegrown core of Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green.
“Traditionally, this is how it’s supposed to work in the NBA,” Kerr said. “If you look over the years, you grow a team through the draft, you take your lumps through the playoffs, you climb up and then you get to the finals. Our team was built somewhat the same way. … I think that’s good for the sport.”
That approach bucks a growing trend around the league of megastar movement as teams have tried to build more through free agency and trades than in the draft. Both teams have eight players on the roster acquired originally in the draft. And according to ESPN, this is the first NBA Finals since the Chicago Bulls-Utah Jazz pairing of 1998 in which the top three playoff scorers from both teams made their league debuts with their current teams.
There are some big difference between the rosters of this year’s finalists, though, with experience the biggest discrepancy. Led by Curry, Green and Thompson, the Warriors have a total of 123 games played in the NBA Finals on their roster compared to none for the Celtics, who lost in the Eastern Conference title round three times in the previous five years.
“There are obviously nerves and adrenaline and anxiety and nerves — like everything in terms of the emotions of playing at this stage,” Curry said while recalling his first trip to the championship series. “That first game is sometimes all over the place because of that. And once you settle in, it does become about basketball, like it normally is.”
Celtics coach Ime Udoka, who was an assistant on two San Antonio Spurs teams that made it this far, isn’t overly concerned, citing the experience his top players have gained in the postseason in recent years. Boston won two Game 7s just to get here this year, beating 2021 NBA champion Milwaukee at home in the second round and winning at Miami in the Eastern Conference title series that ended Sunday night.
“I think once you get out of the initial media circus and the intensity and how everything is much more exaggerated,” Udoka said, “obviously it’s not much different when you get on the court.”
Udoka is the fifth coach since 2015 to make it this far in his first year leading a team, with three of the previous four winning it all. Kerr beat the Cleveland Cavaliers’ David Blatt in a battle of first-year NBA coaches in 2015 and then lost to Ty Lue and the Cavs the following year. The Toronto Raptors’ Nick Nurse also won it in his first year as an NBA coach against the Warriors in 2019.
Before that, the only firstyear NBA coaches to win the title were Pat Riley (1982 Lakers) and Paul Westhead (1980 Lakers). Eddie Gottlieb won the first title ever in the NBA’s precursor, the BAA, in 1947 for the Warriors.
As for the health of each team going into a showdown that wouldn’t wrap up until June 19 if it goes all seven games, the Warriors finished their last series without three key players — Andre Iguodala (neck), Gary Payton II (left elbow) and Otto Porter Jr. (left foot) — who could provide needed defensive help on the wings against Brown and Tatum.
All three have been able to practice this week and are listed as questionable for the opener. Iguodala has missed the past 12 games, Payton has been out for nine and Porter sat out the final two games of the Western Conference title series.
The Celtics are dealing with a significant injury of their own with center Robert Williams III hampered by left knee inflammation and listed as questionable. He played the final four games against Miami but didn’t look at his best.
Smart is also questionable but expected to play with a sprained right ankle that is getting better.