Can’t really argue with you about the army of bandwagon fans, they’re absolutely legion. But as a college student I worked part-time as a ticket-taker at the old Oakland Arena during the Run TMC era Warriors and they sold out every game despite a thoroughly mediocre record. And that was a high point - the Warriors were a joke of a franchise for a very long time. There are still some old diehards that remember the lean decades.
But why? Celtics are a great story: completely turned their season around after a terrible start, playing great team basketball, no flagrant egos or assholes on the team, and they haven’t won a championship in…I can’t remember, but it’s been at least a decade. What’s not to like?
I’ve held a grudge against the Celtics since the Russell/Havlicek/Auerbach days. And that will never change.
I guess Marcus Smart has cleaned up his act and focused on playing basketball, but he was an insufferable prick in college and his first few years in the NBA.
Yikes! I’ll try not to get on your bad side 
I’m really a rather mild-mannered guy…until it concerns the Celtics, Yankees, or Cowboys!
Then this ought to set off @Railer13 : the Eastern Conference and Western Conference championship trophies are being renamed for Bob Cousy and Oscar Robertson, respectively, and for the first time we’ll have Eastern Conference Finals and Western Conference Finals MVP awards, named for Larry Bird and Earvin “Magic” Johnson.
In addition, the Larry O’Brien NBA Championship trophy is getting a redesign to include the names of every previous champion on the base.
Nah, not really. I admire the skills of the great ones such as Cousy and Bird. I’m just sad they played for the Celtics.
Philadelphia 76ers forward Danny Green tore the anterior cruciate ligament and lateral cruciate ligament of his left knee as a result of an impact with teammate Joel Embiid in the Sixers’ Game 6 season-ending loss, and he will require surgery. He’s likely to miss the bulk of 2022-23.
Well the Bucks have been eliminated, good news I can ignore the playoffs for the next [exaggeration]3 months [/exaggeration]. It was pretty obvious, their wins were squeakers.
Brian
At the time I’m writing this, the Mavericks have a 41-point lead over the Suns in the third quarter of Game 7. Holy shit. Both defending conference champions are about to get eliminated in blowouts on the same day.
Holy shit is right 
! I’m honestly shocked - Phoenix has been so strong this year.
I was expecting two close Game 7s today.
Shows what I know.
Surprised and shocked to see the Suns small score…
And we’ve got our final four teams.
Warriors/Mavericks in the West.
Heat/Celtics in the East.
Unlike last year’s conference finals, we’ve no chance of having a first-time champion this year.
Here’s a little history of the four remaining teams in the NBA Playoffs:
Golden State Warriors
The Warriors were one of the original teams to form the NBA, then the Basketball Association of America, as the Philadelphia Warriors. They were the inaugural BAA champions in 1947, and have won the championship six times in their history. After a long stretch of being a mediocre team or worse, the Steph Curry/Klay Thompson “Splash Brothers” Era has led them to great recent success, and they’ve won three NBA championships since 2015-- in '15, '17, and '18. They qualified for the NBA Finals five years in a row during that stretch.
After losing to the Toronto Raptors in the 2019 NBA Finals, the Warriors bottomed out the following year due to major injuries to both Curry and Thompson, both of whom missed essentially the entire season. There was some good news to come out of that lost season, however-- the Warriors acquired Jordan Poole with the 28th pick in the 2019 NBA Draft, and he has been a revelation this year.
The Warriors missed the playoffs in 2021 but have returned this year and probably have to be considered the favorite in the Western Conference Finals, due to their championship pedigree.
Dallas Mavericks
The Dallas Mavericks were established in 1980, and they were a successful team in the mid-'80s before setting futility records in the mid-90s. One of the bright spots of those teams was the sensational play of point guard Jason Kidd, who now, all these years later, is their head coach.
The Mavericks have won one NBA championship, in 2011, behind the play of forward Dirk Nowitzki, a member of the NBA’s 75th Anniversary Team, the 6th-leading scorer in NBA history. Since achieving it, they’ve been back to the playoffs more often than not, but had not advanced past the first round until this season.
Now, Mavs superstar Luka Doncic gets his first big opportunity to compete for the championship, and he’ll have to get his team past an experienced Warriors team to do so.
Miami Heat
By far the most successful of the four expansion teams to come into the league in the late '80s, the Heat have won three NBA championships, in '06, '12, and '13, and six Eastern Conference championships, most recently in 2020 during the NBA Bubble.
Once led by LeBron James, Dwayne Wade, and Chris Bosh, this Heat team is led by Jimmy Butler, Bam Adebayo, and Tyler Herro, who won this year’s Sixth Man of the Year award. The Heat shocked the world when they won the East in 2020, but they’ll surprise no one this year, as the #1 seed in the Eastern Conference. (Incidentally, the Warriors, though they’re the #3 seed in the West, would have home-court advantage over the Heat in a potential NBA Finals matchup).
Boston Celtics
One of the three original BAA teams that still remains in the NBA 75 years later, the Celtics are one of the most successful franchises in North American professional sports, with 17 championships to their name, most of them achieved in the 1960s in the Bill Russell/John Havlicek/Bob Cousy era. They won three titles in the '80s with Larry Bird, Kevin McHale, and Robert Parish, and their most recent title, after a long stretch of futility, came in 2008 when they had the biggest turnaround in history by bringing Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen in to back up Paul Pierce and Rajon Rondo.
The current Celtics are led by Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown, and Marcus Smart, who this year became the first guard to win Defensive Player of the Year in more than 20 years.
The team has had sustained success in the '10s and '20s, missing the playoffs only once since the acquisition of Garnett, who was traded to Brooklyn in 2013. This is Boston’s fourth trip to the Eastern Conference Finals since 2017. The last time they were here, in the 2020 NBA Bubble, they lost to the Heat, so they’ll be looking for some payback.
My Updated Predictions:
Warriors over Mavericks in 6
Celtics over Heat in 6
Warriors over Celtics in 7 (damn it)
At halftime of Mavs/Suns Game 7, Luka Doncic had the same amount of points, 27, as the entire Phoenix Suns team.
The Suns scored an incredibly-bad 10 points in the second quarter last night. 10 points in 12 minutes. And that’s the best team, record-wise, in the NBA.
The box score from the Celtics/Bucks Game 7 explains exactly why Milwaukee got dominated: Three-point shooting.
Boston was 22-of-55 from downtown; Milwaukee was 4-of-33. Williams, Tatum, and Pritchard all hit at least as many, if not more, three-pointers by themselves than the Bucks’ entire team.
ESPN has an article about what to watch for in the conference finals:
The Celtics’ Marcus Smart is questionable for Game 1 against the Heat with a right midfoot sprain.
The Orlando Magic have won the 2022 NBA Draft lottery. They were in a 4-way tie for best lottery odds.
The biggest surprise was the Kings moving up from 7th to 4th.
My Pacers will pick 6th.