Boston Celtics: Pros & cons of facing the Cleveland Cavaliers in round one

Boston Celtics vs. Cleveland Cavaliers playoff matchup: Pros

Arguably the biggest surprise of this past regular season was the tremendous amount of success that the Cleveland Cavaliers managed to achieve.

Despite coming into the year being ranked within the low-20s on virtually every preseason power rankings and seeing numerous core pieces go down for extended periods of time with serious injuries and health ailments, the Cavs managed to exceed seemingly all expectations, finishing off the campaign with a 44-38 record, making it their first winning season in four years.

Leading the charge for the ball club was third-year point guard Darius Garland & fifth-year center Jarrett Allen, both of whom received All-Star nods for their efforts, and first-year forward Evan Mobley, who seems to be all but guaranteed to win the league’s Rookie of the Year award.

Now, by all means, this team is incredibly talented and has played quite well for the majority of this year’s campaign, but what makes their triumphs throughout the season all the more impressive is the fact that this team’s core is so incredibly young.

In fact, just one of their starters is over the age of 24.

Ironically, this factoid that’s made their season all the more impressive is one of the major reasons why we believe the Boston Celtics have a great shot at breezing by the Cavaliers should they square off against each other in round one.

With this youth comes a tremendous lack of experience in big-time situations such as the playoffs and by far the C’s have the upper hand on this front considering the fact that the key rotational pieces in Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown, Marcus Smart, Al Horford, and Grant Williams have all seen Eastern Conference Finals appearances, the majority of whom have appeared in multiple.

On top of all this, even though Cleveland has two stars of their own within their rotation, Boston’s talent pool in the stars category is simply greater, with Tatum (a 3x All-Star who is likely heading towards his second All-NBA team) and Brown (an All-Star last year and a snub for the illustrious contest this season) being more seasoned and established than Garland and Allen currently are–not to mention that the latter may not be 100 percent come round one, as he’s still recovering from a fractured finger in his left hand.

With their advantage in the star-power department, coupled with the team’s overall track record over the years, one could absolutely go into this potential series viewing the Celtics as the sure-fire favorites to advance.