Boston Vs Cleveland

 The 4th and 5th placed match up should be the tightest series in the East with only a handful of games separating and it is going to be a slobberknocker of a series. Both teams had a pretty balanced season with ups and downs and as the final weeks were rolling over they were both dealing with significant player injuries. For Boston it was Alperen Sengun who seemed to miss every second week in the back half of the season, while for Cleveland it was Scottie Barnes and the Kristaps Porzingas missing games. The good news and bad news for the teams is that everyone is healthy as we step into game 1 of the series. I'm sure Boston would have preferred to see Scottie sit a few more games, but we get to see the best of both teams as they fight for a series win.

The season series has seen Boston come out ahead so far with a 2-1 margin. It seems with nearly every match up we could flag an injury asteriks as why the other team lost. The first game of the season Boston lost after a massive 47 point game from Brunson for the Cavs, but this game was prior to the RJ Barrett aquisition. The next game Boston came out ahead but guess who wasn't there for Cleveland, Mr 47 points himself. Game 3 rolls around and both teams were missing players, but with Cleveland missing KP and Scottie.

This has to be one of the most difficult series to predict. The Celtics are currently favoured by the fanes with a 2 to 1 margin of predictors thinking they get out of the series to face the winner of the 1-8 match up.

Boston Celtics

Boston is a really interesting team that has been able to beat some of the top teams in all the land throughout the season, they have quality and depth in every position, so much so that when Alperun Sengun became injured, we saw James Wiseman come back from the dead to try and steal the starters spot from him. The team is of course lead by Jayson Tatum and Darius Garland, who seem to take it in turns to be the best player on the team. Tatum is 11th in the league in scoring and Garland is 20th. Two top 20 scorers in a team is a nice pair of assets to have. Tatum brings with him around 7 rebounds per game, and Garland brings 8 assists, which leads the league. This balance in attack causes trouble for every team that faces them.

Then as mentioned before we have this battle for the starting centre position. Whenever we see Wiseman starts, he steps on the court and gets a double double without breaking a sweat, and Sengun is the same. Both are shooting 62% on the season, so the trouble for GM Toby might be just trying to pick which one to start.

Finally we have RJ Barrett who has come over late in the season and puts up 22 a game. With scorers like this you can see why Garland leads the league in assists.

The tricky thing with this Boston team is that they are deep too, beyond the players already mentioned they have the choice of playing Deni Avdija, Jonathan Kuminga, Jeremy Sochan, DeAnthony Melton, Moses Moody, Trayce Jackson-Davis and Cam Whitmore. Are you crazy? This has to be one of the trickiest decisions for a GM to make, who doesn't get minutes?

 Cleveland Cavaliers

The Cavs on the other hand have a strong starting squad but arguably not as much depth as the Celtics. Starting with a very strong point guard in Jalen Brunson will get you far, we've seen in previous match ups that he is not afraid to be the best player on court, in a match up that features the star power of the Celtics. His individual stats are strong, but don't quite get as high as his opponents overall rankings in the NSL.

The next stars of this squad are probably Kristaps and Ayton, a huge pairing down low, with the benefit of both being able to play starters minutes. While Ayton gets on the court and absorbs rebounds, and scores efficiently and prolifically, he does it all in the paint. Porzingas on the other hand shoots 56% from deep and scores just as much as Ayton. Its kind of disgusting how well this pairing really fits. Also between them they don't let easy shots in. Tall and lanky sometimes gets blocks but always deters shorter shooters. While we don't have a measure for shots detered in NSL, I would imagine this pairing would be right up the top of the leaderboard.

Then there is Scottie Barnes, when his injury was announced you could feel Shams' pain. There were moments where people around the league thought it might turn into a rebuilding season in Cleveland rather than an all in year. I think they kind of landed in the middle though with assets that will be here next year for a bigger roll of the dice. But that is all by the by, as Scottie is healthy and his quickness and speed will push the the pace against Boston.

While Clevelands depth isn't as pronounced as Boston, they actually still have some really great role players that fit a good 2k team, players such as Jose Alvarado causing turnovers, or Josh Hart rebounding, or LeVert scoring, or simply Bismarck Biyombo filling the gaps in the bigs rotation. The use of these skillsets against Boston will surely show the character and flexibilty of Shams.

X Factors

The X factor for Boston is going to be the flexibilty of their rotation. If we see James Wiseman struggle, could we see a Dominic Barlow come in with spot minutes with his slightly higher offensive rebounding rating? Do we see Melton as a starting Shooting Guard as we saw how good he is in a starting role in Minnesota earlier in the season? Does Deni start or is is Scochan or Tatum at the Power Forward spot? How do all these pieces slide around and fit, and can this potential variation give Cleveland an anuerysm?

The X factor for Cleveland is Scottie, we haven't seen much of this full squad play together with Scottie in the line up, week 11,12 and 13 I think were the chance we got to see the sqaud play and they dropped only 2 games in that period. That includes games against Milwaukee and Washington. This team is going to be a problem because the pieces fit neatly together.

Summary

When either of these teams are at their best they can beat anyone. Now both of these teams are at their best its going to come down to a battle of wits between the managers. Can the line up flexiblity that Boston offers excel against the all out rebounding squad that Cleveland offers. Both squads are lead by high quality point guards and have talent enough to surround them with points. I'm going to go against the pack on this one, with the majority of the pundits choosing Boston, I'm going to zag and go a 4-3 victory to Cleveland in a weird away win in a 7 games series.  Best of luck to both, hardest series to pick.