The Celtics have a tall order ahead of them with the Toronto Raptors and Coach Of The Year Nick Nurse. I’m pretty sure we all thought once Kawhi left the Raptors, they would return to where they were before he arrived: good, not great. Yeah, we were wrong. Toronto has in fact remained a dominant team in an NBA that has certainly leveled out talent-wise. Not only that, Toronto has the 4th best odds to repeat as champions at +700.
But you know who’s right behind them at +800? (If you’re still reading this and you can’t guess who it is, I don’t know what to tell you). That’s right, those Celtics from Boston. What the C’s lack in size, they certainly make up for in defensive awareness and hustle. Let’s face it, when Daniel Theis and Enes Kanter are your two big men, you may be lacking in the height department. That’s not to say that Theis and Kanter haven’t exceeded expectations and even been pivotal in their sweep of a (well, bad) 76ers team.
Kemba, Tatum, Smart, and Brown are all going to need to keep up their elite level of play, and then some, because this series is almost guaranteed to go more than 4 games. It will be a grind. Does Gordon Hayward’s injury hurt the Celtics? Not as much as we may (or may not) think, but Boston’s bench is going to truly need to step up in this series in order to advance.
Brad Stevens has earned his chops as an NBA coach, now he’s up against the coach of the year. This will be good.
Or it’ll be disgusting, gritty basketball, who knows. It’ll certainly be entertaining.

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