The Boston Celtics seemed to be headed toward title no. 18 when they took a 2-1 lead over the Golden State Warriors in the 2022 NBA Finals. They were even ahead late in Game 4, but the Warriors roared back to win that game and won the next two as well to earn their 4th title in the last eight seasons.
Stephen Curry was simply spectacular for the Warriors and won Finals MVP while Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown failed to deliver in the big moments. Tatum recently spoke about the Celtics falling short in the Finals and admitted that there was one aspect where the Warriors were clearly better than them.
via ESPN:
“Talent-wise, we were right there with them,” Tatum says of the Warriors. “But you could tell that they had been there before. You could tell they didn’t panic. They were just mentally tougher than we were and that’s a hard pill to swallow.”
That experience of playing at that stage definitely helped Golden State. As Tatum said, there was no panic, and Warriors GM Bob Myers said that Curry, Klay Thompson, and Draymond Green were quite confident when they went down 2-1. One of them even stated that they can win the next three games and that is exactly what they ended up doing. Should the teams meet again in the Finals, you would expect the Celtics to perform better, with that experience now under their belt, but a rematch doesn’t seem that likely at this point.
The Celtics Have Struggled After A Hot Start
After looking like far and away the best team in the NBA for almost the first two months of the season, the Celtics have wobbled a bit recently. Before their win over the Minnesota Timberwolves on Friday night, they had lost 5 out of 6 games and had seen the Bucks overtake them for the best record in the league. They are now back on top after beating the Timberwolves but there are certainly a lot more question marks about them right now.
Tatum and Brown also showed some love to Ime Udoka recently, with the former saying that Udoka deserves as much credit as anybody for their good start to the season. Many were wondering how the Celtics would cope without the suspended Udoka and apart from this rough stretch, they have been doing just fine.
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