As impressive as the Boston Celtics have been at times since turning their season around and grinding their way to the NBA Finals, they're still a flawed team that has to overcome some internal issues if they're going to win the title within the next week.
Perhaps the biggest challenge they've had in the last two series in particular: limiting their turnovers.
The 18 turnovers and 33 points allowed off those miscues in Game 2 sank the Celtics on the road against Golden State, and an unfortunate 15 more turnovers allowed gave the Warriors their window to steal Game 4 and even the series up at 2-2 heading back to San Francisco.
Before that, Ime Udoka's squad earned plenty of criticism for fumbling games away in the Eastern Conference Finals against Miami's aggressive defense, including coughing the ball up 23 times in a ghastly Game 3 in that series.
If it seems like a recurring theme that might hold the key to the Celtics winning or losing the NBA Finals, perhaps that's because it is.
In the 14 games the Celtics have won this postseason, they have turned the basketball over an average of 11.9 times. On the flip side, they're averaging 16.1 turnovers surrendered in their eight losses to this point.
Those numbers, it's worth noting, are heavily skewed by Boston's horrid Game 3 against Miami in the previous round. But the trend still follows: the Celtics committed no fewer than three extra turnovers in losses than in wins during each series. Through four games against the Warriors, Boston has allowed 12 turnovers in both wins and 18 and 15 turnovers in the Game 2 and Game 4 losses, respectively.
Then, of course, it matters what teams have done to punish the Celtics when they make those mistakes.
Boston has just allowed 14.4 points off of turnovers in their 14 postseason wins so far. In the eight losses, that number jumps to 22.5. They've given up 20 points or more off of turnovers five times in these playoffs and have won just one of those contests.
To think of it in the more glass-half-full way, though, Boston is 13-4 in games it doesn't spot teams 20 or more points by giving the ball away. So…maybe they can just not do that from here on out.
Obviously, the brilliance of Stephen Curry (34.2 points per game in the Finals) can't be denied as a major obstacle to Boston's title hopes. But this team has already weathered two 30-point games from Curry (plus a solid Klay Thompson performance in Game 3) and won. The Celtics have no choice but to deal with that at this point, and they've proven they can do so because they're a better team than the Warriors on the whole.
Put simply: if the Celtics can refrain from literally giving away games for the remainder of this series, they'll probably hoist the Larry O'Brien Trophy at the end of it.
