Back in early October, our Red’s Army staff made its predictions for how the 17-18 season would transpire. It’s time to look back and see how we did.
Today, we’ll look back on our predictions for when the Celtics season would end. We all had a pretty good feeling that the Celtics would make a deep run, but that was before the craziness of opening night unfolded.
John Karalis — Eastern Conference Finals
As much as I want to believe they will take that next step and beat the Cavs, I don’t think LeBron is ready to abdicate his throne. A healthy and motivated Isaiah Thomas will give the Cavs essentially what Kyrie Irving did last season. Meanwhile the young Celtics bench isn’t quite ready for this moment. It will be a much better series this year, but I just can’t bring myself to bet against LeBron and the Cavs just yet.
Mike Dynon — Lose in the NBA Finals
Why the hell not? Lebron can’t make the finals indefinitely. The Cs have upgraded their talent over last season and Kyrie is extremely motivated.
Ben Mark — Eastern Conference Finals
Same end-point as last year, but again, I think it’s going to feel different. The Celtics will not just be a welcome mat to the Finals for the Cavs this post-season. There will be no 50-point defeats at a silent and deflated TD Garden. This will be a 6-7 game series with fascinating subplots and will come after another epic Celtics/Wizards slugfest in the Eastern Conference Semis. The 17-18 Celtics will get one step closer to dethroning the Cavs, who after this season, won’t sniff the Finals stage again for a long, long time.
KJ Kourafas — Lose in the NBA Finals
The Kardashian Curse, IT’s injury, Boston’s coaching, and a little bit of wishful thinking has me believing the Celtics will make it to the Finals. The Cavs may have the better roster, but a combination of factors will result in the Celtics shocking the East and reaching the Finals.
Liam Green — Eastern Conference Finals
LeBron James is still LeBron James. But I do think they’ll make a much tougher out than last year. Tough 6 or 7 game series.
The verdict: Credit to Mike and KJ for thinking big, and if injuries hadn’t plagued the Cs they probably would have been right. John, Liam and I all qualified our prediction by claiming that it wouldn’t be a repeat of the Cavs’ gentlemen sweep from 16-17 and we were spot on in that regard. I expect to see expectations raised higher when we do this prediction for 18-19 in the fall.
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