It was a meeting of near-equals last Saturday night, somewhat surprisingly.
The top team in the NBA's Eastern Conference against its third-best side.
The club with the fourth-best net rating in the league (plus-5.7 points per 100 possessions) battling No 7 (plus-3.9) to the final play of the game.
LeBron James, Kyrie Irving, Kevin Love and the Cleveland Cavaliers at one end.
And at the other? Isaiah Thomas, Jae Crowder, Avery Bradley and the Boston Celtics.
It sounds a bit weird.
Feels kind of just inexplicably strange.
But it is as plain as the standings that link them together, closer than looks quite right.
The Celtics are indeed near-equals with the Cavaliers.
LeBron’s Cavs.
The Cleveland team who went to the NBA Finals just eight months ago.
It was, in fact, the Celtics who won that game last Saturday night on the final shot, Bradley nailing a buzzer-beating three.
A far cry from those eight months ago, when Cleveland blitzed an overmatched Boston right out of the play-offs in a first-round sweep – winning by 13, eight, eight and eight.
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How have Boston come this far, this fast, with a roster that very strongly resembles the one that could not compete with Cleveland last season?
Simple – they play a winning style.
In particular, a style that on the other side of the US in California is on track to win more games than any team in NBA history.
The Celtics do not have Stephen Curry, which is a fairly significant factor for why they are not challenging the Golden State Warriors on their way to a record 73 wins, but they might have something like the coaching equivalent of Curry in Brad Stevens.
Stevens, the 39-year-old wunderkind who left the university ranks to take over at Boston in 2013, has this team well-drilled to play just about the most efficient style their collective talent will allow.
The Warriors are, at 47-4, by definition great at just about everything on a basketball court.
But their most striking characteristics – the fundamental building blocks of what make them who they are, you might say – are three-point shooting (second in attempts per game), moving the ball (first in assist percentage), running the floor (second in game pace), defending the perimeter (third in three-point opponents’ field-goal percentage) and adequately protecting the rim (eighth in opponents’ field-goal percentage inside five feet).
The Celtics kind of compare.
Boston are seventh in three-point attempts (despite the fact they are not all that good at making them), tied-third in assist percentage, third in game pace, eighth in opponents’ three-point percentage and 17th in opponents’ field-goal percentage inside five feet.
Isaiah Thomas is a willing and fearless attacker of the rim, and an improving facilitator and three-point marksman.
Jae Crowder is a burgeoning elite defender, able to players bigger than his 6ft 6in frame, and has a growing ability to drop a three.
Jared Sullinger bodies up well defensively, too.
Avery Bradley has blossomed into a valuable 3-and-D wing.
There is, in these kinds of players, a hint of Curry, Draymond Green and Klay Thompson.
Not nearly a finished product, but isolated elements that Stevens is teasing out into a more-than-the-sum-of-its-parts Golden State facsimile.
Their bench is stacked with quality in players such as Amir Johnson, Marcus Smart and Kelly Olynyk.
It is enough to make them 31-23, third in the East and a real, though still distinctly outside threat to maybe even make the NBA Finals.
They certainly showed the Cavaliers are not invincible.
Stevens has them in the “if-things-break-right” territory, for which he probably deserves coach of the year.
Yes, it sounds weird to compare them with the Warriors.
Feels inexplicably strange.
But watch them in action and you will see the basics are there.
As inexplicably strange as it might feel, it is plainly there in the standings.
It is plainly there in their statistical rankings.
It was plainly there in the scoreboard at Cleveland on last Saturday night.
jraymond@thenational.ae
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