“Agree or Disagree” on 3 first-round predictions for the Boston Celtics
By Mark Nilon
The NBA playoffs kicked things off this past weekend, and easily the most mesmerizing outing of them all came about Sunday afternoon when the Boston Celtics played host to the Brooklyn Nets in Game One of this best-of-seven quarterfinals matchup.
In the days leading up to tip-off, many were stating that this showdown between the two Atlantic Division rivals has the potential to be an all-time great series, for both are star-studded ball clubs with legitimate championship aspirations, yet one of them won’t even find itself making it out of round one.
Sunday’s exhibition seemingly proved to live up to the hype, as it was an exhilarating 48-minute battle that ultimately came down to the final shot, as budding superstar, Jayson Tatum, managed to put up an acrobatic spinning lay-in right as the final buzzer sounded to give the C’s a hard-fought 115-114 win and, in turn, a 1-0 lead in the series.
Being that we’re just one game down with a minimum of three more to go, there’s simply no telling what will happen in the coming days and weeks.
As of right now, all we can actually do is speculate on what could wind up transpiring throughout this first-round bout, and it seems like the folks at Clutch Points are well ahead of the pack in this department as they’ve already gone about and discussed 3 specific predictions for this first-round series.
With this, it sparked the desire for us at HH to push out yet another installment of one of our favorite series we call “Agree or Disagree”–not to be confused with “Pass or Pursue”–, where we discuss recently established concepts across the media landscape and state whether we see eye to eye.
So, without further adieu, let’s get started:
Boston Celtics prediction No. 1) “Jaylen Brown will score 25 points per game”
As we stated already, this matchup between the Brooklyn Nets and Boston Celtics is looking like it will wind up being a great all-around series, and a major reason for this is because of each team’s possession of some of the top-billed stars in the entire league.
For the former, their roster is headlined by the likes of established veterans Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving while the latter has two young studs in Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown.
Now, while all of these aforementioned talents have the ability to go scorched earth on any given night, Clutch Points writer, Nihad Zunic, went about and zeroed in on the second half of the Jay squad in Brown with his first prediction, as he believes that the 2021 All-Star and 2022 All-Star snub will wind up averaging 25 points per night once this series is all said and done.
Citing his growth as an offensive weapon, coupled with the fact that Brooklyn’s defensive strategy will largely be focused on containing Tatum, Zunic is under the impression that the 25-year-old could easily go for this specific average:
"The Nets will likely look to prioritize Tatum in this series. He scorched them for 54 in their last matchup, so they know where the main danger is coming from. Yet, Brown has increasingly shown offensive maturity over the last few years. The Celtics forward makes better decisions, takes better shots, and he has become a true offensive weapon for this Celtics lineup. Due to the aforementioned focus on Tatum and the inconsistent Nets defense, the Celtics will look for Brown to take more responsibility."
Without a doubt, Brown is a player who can go out and drop the quarter-century mark on an opponent and it wouldn’t come as a shock to anyone. That said, when looking at his track record against Brooklyn this past year, it’s evident that the wing has struggled to find his offensive groove.
Through four regular-season matchups between these two clubs, JB saw himself finishing averages of 18.5 points on 50 percent shooting from the floor and a lowly 23 percent shooting from deep.
Though this scoring number is by no means bad, what makes us slightly trepidatious when it comes to Zunic’s prediction is the fact that he failed to eclipse even the 20-point mark in regard to a scoring average even when going up against an injury-riddled and oft-rotationally inconsistent Nets team.
With their roster nearly at 100 percent, that could go on to make things a bit more challenging for him in this area of the game, and, should Ben Simmons wind up making his debut for the team, it could severely hinder his chances of matching this predicted number even more.
While Jaylen Brown did get off to a great start in the scoring department in Game One, dropping 23 points in nearly 40 minutes of action, we feel as though seeing him averaging 25 or more by the end of this series is just a tad bit out of reach.