Five Ways I'm Pre-Coping With the Celtics Possibly Winning the Championship

If the Process has taught us one thing in the past 11 years, it's to always be prepared.

Following the Sixers' one-round-earlier-than-usual elimination this year, whenever anyone has asked me who I'm rooting for in these NBA playoffs, my answer has been the same: Anyone but the Celtics. I had other minor rooting interests here and there -- I wanted to see Jokic vs. Doncic in the WCFs, I thought it was annoyingly early for the Pacers to make the ECFs -- but really, I did not care who reigned over the 29 other teams with the Larry O'Brien trophy next month as long as they were not wearing green and white while doing so. It's basically been that way for me since 2020, maybe since 2018 -- the only consistent solace I've received as the Sixers pulled up short time and time again in the playoffs is that the Celtics ultimately did so as well. 

But now, we're at the point where "Anyone But the Celtics" is down to just a single team: the Dallas Mavericks, who blew out the Minnesota Timberwolves to eliminate them in five games in Minny on Thursday night, and will meet the awaiting Celtics in the NBA Finals, starting a week from now. The Mavs have a chance, certainly -- MOC seems to think it's a pretty good one, though he is also speaking out of self-preservation -- but they will decidedly be the underdog against the top-seeded Celtics, who will have home court advantage after going 64-18 in the regular season and now 12-2 through the first three rounds of the playoffs. As soon as two weeks from today, we could be living in a world where Al Horford has a ring. Blugh. 

As unacceptable as this thought is to me, it's likely enough to become reality that I'd like to get ahead of it a little. And if you're a Sixers fan, you know what that means: Coming up with as many ways as possible to discredit a potential Celtics' championship before it becomes an inevitability, so we're locked and loaded with as much slander ammo as possible for when the social media wars commence. Here's five things I'm focusing on to pre-cope with the possibility of Payton Pritchard winning a championship before Joel Embiid.

1. They avoided everybody

There were eight teams this year besides Boston that won at least 48 games. If Boston wins the championship, they will have beaten exactly one of those teams in the playoffs: these Mavs, who won 50 games and ended up as the West's five seed. They get to steer clear of all four of the best teams in the West -- including the terrifying Timberwolves, who they went to overtime with in their two games this regular season (winning one and losing one) and the defending champ Nuggets, who beat them in both meetups -- as well as the two teams just below them in the East, the Knicks and the Bucks. (They of course also got to duck Joel Embiid and the Sixers, though I'll leave it to the lot of you to decide whether that was a good or bad thing for this Boston team.) 

Put simply, to get here, the Celtics have had to beat an eight seed, a four seed and a six seed, and to get to the Larry O'B they'll have to beat a five seed. In terms of opponent record and standing, It's one of the easiest roads to the title any team has ever had, and any argument towards discrediting the Celtics' potential 2024 championship run has to start with that. 

2. Everyone they did play was injured

Of course, going hand in hand with the good teams they ducked is the highly compromised nature of the teams the actuallyy did play. The best players on each of the three teams they played to come out of the Eastern Conference -- the Heat's Jimmy Butler, the Cavaliers' Donovan Mitchell and the Pacers' Tyrese Haliburton -- each missed multiple games of their respective series, with Butler missing the entirety of Boston's first-round matchup with Miami a year after he'd led the Celtics' dispatching in the Conference Finals. So not only did the Celtics play an absolutely cake schedule to get to the finals, they were given a couple extra layers of frosting by not even having to face these squads at full strength for much or all of their respective series. (Not to mention that if the other scariest teams in the East -- the Knicks, the Bucks and yes, the Sixers -- had managed to stay even a little bit healthier, Boston probably wouldn't have been able to skip straight to dessert in the first place.) 

And the Mavs? Healthy so far, but rookie sensation center Dereck Lively II was banged up for most of the conference finals, and perennial MVP candidate Luka Doncic is suffering from a right knee sprain, though it didn't seem to be affecting his play much on Thursday night. Feels all but guaranteed that one of those guys -- or Kyrie Irving, or P.J. Washington, or one of the other dudes on the team that Dallas can't really afford to be without for long stretches -- ends up missing time in these finals. 

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3. No one is impressed with Jayson Tatum

While I don't really have anything specifically personal against Jayson Tatum, it is true that I absolutely hate watching him succeed in any way and wish him nothing but failure for the duration of his NBA career. That's been tough, since ever since he's come in the league in 2017, he's succeeded more consistently than pretty much anyone else -- at least among players who've never won a championship or an MVP,. But even as he's led his Celtics to one of the best regular seasons of the decade, and even as he's captained their 10-2 run to start these playoffs, the general consensus about him in this postseason has basically been a shrug so far, with his play through the first three rounds being generally written off as "uninspiring."  

I don't even know how fair that is -- his numbers have mostly been quite good, and the Celtics just keep winning. But if there is a chance to do the "Are we sure Tatum is really the best player on this team?" thing even as he's leading them to an NBA championship, you can best believe I will not let a small thing like fairness get in the way of my seizing it with both hands. 

4. They never won anything before Jrue got there

You know who folks have been impressed with during these playoffs? The man we (well, I) used to call The Damaja. Jrue Holiday has brushed off the wildly underwhelming offensive performances he's delivered in playoff runs past -- including his championship run with the Bucks -- and is posting incredible 49/40/94% shooting splits this postseason, while averaging nearly three times as many assists and turnovers and of course making huge defensive plays like his series-sealing strip of Andrew Nembhard late in Game 3 against the Pacers to complete the comeback win for Boston. He has absolutely served as the missing piece sliding into place for the Celtics so far this postseason, and if they do win the title this year, he will be one of the biggest reasons why. 

Which, of course, means that some percentage of any Celtics championship will belong to The Process. Had we not let Jrue go 11 years ago to kick off this whole damn thing, the Celtics' season would of course still be ending at the bottom of a big pile of Marcus Smart bricks, while an injured-as-always Malcolm Brogdon watches helplessly from the sidelines. Shame that the C's couldn't simply get there on their own, really, but good for them that our leftovers packed enough protein to finally help 'em get over the hump a decade later. 

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5. If they do lose to Dallas, it'll be their worst L yet

Cheating a little here, natch, to allow for the fact that the Celtics really might lose to this Mavericks team: They have not yet faced an offense nearly as unstoppable as the one co-captained by Luka and Kyrie, and with the Mavs' defense improving to at least "coherent" in these playoffs, they're are playing well enough to take out anyone right now. Hell, while the Celtics have coasted thusfar without having to deal with a single 50-win team, Dallas has already eliminated three of 'em: The star-studded Clippers, the top-seeded Thunder, and now the prematurely anointed Timberwolves. Luka in particular looks like the baddest man in the world right now; he will certainly not be intimidated going up against anyone on the Celtics in this series. 

And if the Mavs do beat the Celtics? Absolute calamity in Beantown. If they can't win a title this season, after seven seasons of getting close, and finally lucking out with the easiest path to the finals that maybe any Eastern Conference team has ever had, and facing a team in the finals that didn't even have home-court advantage in the first round? This would be their version of losing to the Hawks in the Eastern Conference Semifinals, a year where everything was set up for them to finally Do the Thing and they still couldn't fucking do it. And even worse for them, they'd fall by the hand of Kyrie Irving, the most hated player in recent franchise history, and have to watch as Kyrie takes a celebratory dump on the Lucky the leprechaun logo at center court. It would arguably be as low a low -- maybe even lower -- as any the Process has suffered since the Celtics and Sixers were sent on diverging postseason tracks following their meeting in the 2018 playoffs. 

If the Celtics do win in these finals, I'll be properly doomsday-prepped to survive it. But if they lose, I'll be leading the fucking parade on Broad Street. Seth Curry can play the Jason Kelce part. 

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Andrew Unterberger writes for The Rights To Ricky Sanchez, as part of the 'If Not, Pick Will Convey as Two Second-Rounders' section of the site. You can follow Andrew on Twitter @AUGetoffmygold and can also read him at Billboard. 

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