Are the Celtics enjoying the easiest path ever to an NBA Finals?

Indiana Pacers point guard Tyrese Haliburton will not play in Game 3 of the Eastern Conference finals and his status for Game 4 is in doubt, raising more concerns about the Boston Celtics’ worthiness heading into the NBA Finals.

Should Haliburton’s left hamstring injury, which sidelined him for a while in January, cost him the rest of this series, the Celtics could be playing closeout games against a third straight opponent without their best player. Jimmy Butler missed the Miami Heat’s entire five-game opening round loss to Boston. Donovan Mitchell missed the last two losses to the Cleveland Cavaliers in the five-game Eastern Conference semifinals.

Even if Haliburton gets bumped, would this be the easiest path ever to an NBA Finals?

At least not statistically. Boston’s opponents – the Heat (46-36), Cavaliers (48-34) and Pacers (47-35) – have won an average of 47 games. Since the league expanded to its current 16-team format for the 1984 playoffs, 18 NBA finalists have faced a lower average (or its equivalent) through three rounds:

18. 2020 Los Angeles Lakers (46.9)

T15. 2016 Golden State Warriors (46.7), 2001 Philadelphia 76ers (46.7), 1985 Boston Celtics (46.7)

14. 1989 Detroit Pistons (46)

13. 1986 Boston Celtics (45.7)

12. 2003 New Jersey Nets (45.3)

T10. 2007 Cleveland Cavaliers (45), 2002 New Jersey Nets (45)

9. Orlando Magic from 1995 (44.7)

8. 1991 Chicago Bulls (44.3)

T6. 2013 Miami Heat (44), 1983-84 Boston Celtics (44)

5. 1988 Los Angeles Lakers (43.7)

T3. 2023 Denver Nuggets (43.3), 1985 Los Angeles Lakers (43.3)

2. 1984 Los Angeles Lakers (40.7)

1. 1987 Los Angeles Lakers (39.3)

A few observations:

• The years between Michael Jordan’s last dance with the Chicago Bulls and the rise of top player LeBron James were rough in the East. The 2003 New Jersey Nets won 49 games and faced opponents who won an average of 45.3 games. It’s a miracle they won two games against the Spurs in the NBA Finals.

• The Western Conference during the heyday of Magic Johnson’s Lakers: ’80s Woof.

• It’s hard to analyze injuries, especially since guys in the 1980s played big minutes on their back feet. For example, Larry Drew, the starting point guard for the 1984 Kansas City Kings, played all three games of a first-round series against the Lakers on what he later described as “a knee that was only 60% healthy and I was dragging around.” .” No single box score can properly explain these health problems.

• Ten of the eighteen teams won the title, so preparation has little to do with championship worthiness.

• Many of these teams were juggernauts. Eleven of them won 62 or more games, including the 1985 Lakers (65-17), the 1986 Celtics (67-15), the 2013 Heat (66-16) and the 2016 Warriors (73-9). They handed out a lot of regular-season losses to their conference brethren, and they earned their easy paths.

• The reverse is true for teams on more difficult roads. The eight toughest paths to the NBA Finals include those of the sixth-seeded 1995 Rockets and the fifth-seeded 2020 Heat, two of the four lowest seeds ever to reach the title series. Higher seeds face teams with fewer wins; lower seeds face teams with more wins. So it stands to reason that the 64-win Celtics – who won fourteen more games than any team in the conference – would have an easier schedule. By the way, that list of most difficult roads:

One or both of this year’s fifth-seeded Mavericks and sixth-seeded Pacers could join the list of the toughest roads to the NBA Finals. While Indiana drops the series 2-0 in Boston, Dallas leads the Western Conference finals by the same margin against the Minnesota Timberwolves after a thrilling Game 2 win.

If the Mavericks win this season, we’ll applaud their tough road to a ring, but that storyline would be lost in time once we start the legacy-driven discussion of The Moment Luka Dončić Officially Arrived.

We generally understand that the West was a gauntlet in the 2000s, but no one is having a meaningful conversation now about how rough the sledding was for those early 2000s Lakers. We talk about the dominance of Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal and one of the worst officiating games in NBA history – Game 6 of the 2002 Western Conference Finals – and its relationship to the scandal that has wrought the league.

Every champion has a story, and there’s a chance the cupcake road this season will be Boston’s. That will depend on how the Celtics’ path unfolds from here. Are the Timberwolves or Mavericks a worthy threat in the next round? Could Jayson Tatum convincingly capture Finals MVP and cement his place in Celtics history? If Kristaps Porziņģis never gets healthy and Boston still wins, are we having a different health discussion? What if the Celtics continue to follow suit and become a dynasty of their own?

The schedule is Boston’s story straight away. This may not be within two weeks. That won’t be in two years, unless they fail to win and this group is still looking for a first title. Then they will be the eternal bridesmaid who couldn’t even finish the job when most of the work was done for them due to injury and coincidence.

Here’s what we know at this point: These Celtics are one of the few teams that have never faced a 50-win opponent en route to the NBA Finals, and if Haliburton can’t return, they would be the only ones to beat those opponents without their best player on the floor for any of the series-clinching games.

Even luckier for them may be the injuries that led these Celtics to the Heat, Cavaliers and Pacers. Indiana defeated Milwaukee without Giannis Antetokounmpo and New York without half its rotation. Joel Embiid’s knee injury affected Philadelphia’s seeding And his ability to get out of the first round.

Injuries are part of the process. No one remembers the 1985 Lakers beating the Phoenix Suns without their three best players in the first round, even as LA’s Bob McAdoo said during the series“I’m not going to sit here politically and say, ‘Oh, they’ve got a great team,’ because they’re without Walter Davis, James Edwards and Larry Nance. Without those players, we would have to run away with this.”

An excerpt from a UPI story about that same Lakers’ Western Conference final against Denver: “[Alex] English is not the only injured Nugget, but he is the most seriously injured. The others are Calvin Natt, Mike Evans and Lafayette Lever with knee injuries, Dan Issel with a bruised thigh and Wayne Cooper with a rib injury.” But all we’re talking about is how the Lakers got revenge on the Celtics in the 1985 NBA. Finals.

We don’t have to let decades pass to forget the road to a championship. Is anyone arguing that the 2022 Warriors will beat the Nuggets without Jamal Murray, the Grizzlies without Ja Morant, and the Mavericks with a diminished Dončić? No, they taught the Celtics a lesson in the NBA Finals and restored their dynasty.

Last year, Denver defeated the Timberwolves without Jaden McDaniels and Naz Reid, the Suns without Chris Paul for four games and Deandre Ayton for the clincher, and the Lakers with LeBron James dealing with a foot injury that two doctors apparently said required surgery. We immediately labeled Nikola Jokić as an all-time great and his Nuggets as a potential dynasty.

It seems like the only absence we ever really discuss is Jordan’s in the mid-1990s, when his baseball career opened a championship window for the Rockets. Heck, we’re even discrediting Orlando’s road to the 1995 NBA Finals, even though Jordan was on the court for the entire six-game series. Maybe it’s all mystical.

Maybe it’s just the stories we tell. But a champion is a champion, and Boston will be one when it is one.