Warriors, Celtics built Finals teams through draft

SAN FRANCISCO — When Steve Kerr looks at the way the Boston Celtics built a championship-caliber team he sees plenty of similarities to how his Golden State 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 and added the necessary pieces to get over the hump this year to make it to the Finals.

Waiting for the Celtics in Game 1 on Thursday night will be Kerr’s Warriors, who are making their sixth trip in eight years 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 this is the first Finals since Chicago-Utah in 1998, according to ESPN, when the top three playoff scorers from both teams made their NBA debuts with their current teams.

The similarities between the teams isn’t complete, with the biggest discrepancy being experience. Led by

Curry, Thompson and Green, the Warriors have a total of 123 games played in the Finals on their roster compared to none for the Celtics, who lost in the Eastern Conference finals 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 about his first Finals appearance. “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.”