Who Will Win the NBA Finals?

Author: Jack Gordon

The 2021 NBA playoffs have been about the weirdest thing we have seen in a long, long time.

There has never been a postseason in NBA history with as many injuries to major stars and key players, and it all culminated perfectly in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Finals with a matchup between the Milwaukee Bucks, led by Jrue Holiday and Khris Middleton, and the Atlanta Hawks, led by… John Collins and Kevin Huerter? With the injuries to Trae Young and Giannis, that was quite literally the worst Eastern Conference Finals game anybody could have envisioned.

And yet, through everything, we finally have a finals matchup: the Phoenix Suns and the Milwaukee Bucks.

The weirdest thing about these finals is that they probably aren’t the best two teams, and it isn’t really that close. Watching Brooklyn, it became almost too obvious that they were absolutely the best team in the league, and if they didn’t suffer injuries to two of their top three players, the Nets would have crushed the Bucks and gone on to win the championship with their eyes closed.

The Bucks are such a frustrating team, and a lot of that has to do with the Mike Budenholzer situation. Over the last few seasons, it has become painfully clear that while Coach Bud is a great regular season coach, he is not good in the playoffs, largely due to his stubbornness and at times unwillingness to make key adjustments not only over the span of a game, but over the span of a series and over the span of the playoffs. He is just not helpful to this roster, and for anyone who knows or watches a lot of basketball, the Bucks are such a frustrating team because they so clearly are not playing at their potential. You hear Charles Barkley say it at every halftime show: I believe the Bucks are good enough to, and will, win the NBA championship. But they have to be the dumbest team I’ve seen. And now, the Giannis injury looms over the series and over Game 1. And despite all of this, they still made the NBA finals and have a real shot at winning the championship, because when they’re on, they’re on. When they’re hitting shots, dominating the paint, and playing the best team and individual defense in the league, they are unstoppable. The problem is that they aren’t consistent, and when it gets to a tight fourth quarter, the offense can be hard to watch.

This is where the Phoenix Suns have a chance to win in this series - through a higher level of consistency, reliability and ability to make more adjustments.

There’s a lot of different storylines for the Suns that have already been talked to death, including but not limited to: Chris Paul chasing his first ever ring; Devin Booker becoming a star; Monty Williams and the appreciation he has been receiving; Deandre Ayton’s somewhat shocking elevation to one of the best big men in the league; Cameron Payne’s even more shocking elevation to a crucial rotation piece on a finals team, and more.

But the biggest storyline is the Chris Paul piece of all this, and the 24/7 media and twitter love that is awaiting him if he puts up a Finals-MVP-type performance and wins a title. He was magnificent to close out the Clippers, and displayed to everyone that he still has that gear inside of him, even at the age he is. That gear is the ability to take a look around, analyze the situation and the danger of losing that game 6, and ultimately make the decision to put the team on his back and make sure that his team wins. He was running the offense, hitting shots, making plays, flopping around, goating Clippers into technicals… it was the full package, and just another example in years of examples that Chris Paul is a winning player, that just hasn’t won. Sometimes that happens. He has flaws, and some would argue that those characteristics and teammate interaction flaws have been what holds him back from being a winner. But this season with Phoenix has been a combination of him finding the perfect fit with the right pieces, and also a maturity and growth that Paul now has in his sixteenth season.

But as great as they have been, it’s hard to ignore that the Suns have played an injured Lakers team, an injured Denver team, and an injured Clippers team. Their version of the Nets in Milwaukee was the first round Lakers series, because in all likelihood, had they stayed healthy, the Lakers would have beaten Phoenix and may possibly have been back in the Finals. Maybe the Suns would have even lost to the Clippers had Kawhi been healthy.

None of this is to say, however, that these teams don’t deserve to be where they are. Everyone will love throwing out the word “asterisk” into every discussion of the champion even before they win. And yes, while we most definitely will look back on these playoffs as absolutely ridiculous and as a playoffs where every team got injured leading up to the Finals, it ended up with not that ridiculous of a result. Coming into the playoffs, both Phoenix and Milwaukee were heavy title contenders. They weren’t the favorites, but that is why front offices are always willing to build a team that may even give them a chance at contending, because anything can and sometimes does happen. Both of these teams are really good, and even though they beat some injured teams, not only were both of these teams injured at times as well, but that’s part of the playoffs. One of the most important things in such a long season, in any sport, is staying healthy and preparing to continue playing all the way to the end. Sometimes the teams that come out on top are the ones that can stay healthy the longest, and that’s exactly what happened this year.

It’s going to be pretty cool to see who wins, no matter who it is. If it’s Phoenix, we get to see Chris Paul finally capture that elusive title and cement himself as one of the all-time greats (and we will likely be subjected to the First Take discussions the next morning: “Stephen A. says Chris Paul is the greatest point guard of all time?!”). And if it’s Milwaukee, we get to see Giannis win his first title and continue to ascend as a two-time MVP who has now also won a championship and Finals MVP, which is rare company.

Essentially, the point is this. As weird as these playoffs have been, and as much complaining as people have done about all the injuries to major stars and the fact that we have two somewhat surprising teams from small markets in the finals (all of which is valid), it’s also okay to appreciate the fact that this will actually be a good matchup. Either team can easily win this series, and some all-time legacies are at stake.