Boston Celtics: 3 negative trends to watch out for in the NBA Finals

Negitive Boston Celtics trend No. 3) Blown leads

This trend is easily the craziest one to me, both from the eye test and a numbers standpoint.

To analyze the numbers, I decided to compare the largest lead the Boston Celtics had and the final scoring margin in each of their playoff games. I averaged those two sets of numbers, then compared the difference between the two to essentially get the average amount of points from leads the C’s have blown in all of their playoff games so far.

The average largest lead from each game was about 16 points, while the average final scoring margin for each game was about six points.

Essentially, that means that on average, the Celtics need at least a ten-point lead at some point in the game to have a good chance of winning, otherwise they will likely blow the lead and lose.

Seemingly even in games where the team went up 20+ or 30+ points, they often gave up the lead somewhat to around ten points or single digits and still went on to win.

As made evident in Game 7 against Miami, where the team led the entire game, Boston saw their largest lead of 17 points, had a double-digit lead with a few minutes left in the game, and still managed to almost lose on a Jimmy Butler 3-pointer with 11 seconds left.

This team has a huge problem with holding leads.

Either the Celtics need to figure out how to better close out games or need to continue winning games with blowouts to account for the fragile margin of error they have when it comes to having a lead in games.

All in all, while these are definitely significant weaknesses that could be the Celtics’ downfall in the Finals, that doesn’t take away the fact the Boston Celtics are here for a reason. They played well enough in other aspects, and that allowed them to get to this point.

With that being said, these trends are good things to pay attention to in order to better understand whether the Celtics are playing well or not.