The 2024 NBA Conference Finals Entrance Survey

After a second round for the ages, we’ve reached the NBA’s final four. While the Boston Celtics relatively cruised to the conference finals, the Indiana Pacers and Minnesota Timberwolves both won Game 7s on the road in stunning fashion to advance, and the Dallas Mavericks won two straight games to outlast the Oklahoma City Thunder in six. With a full 48 hours before the conference finals begin, we paneled our NBA experts to examine the first two rounds and preview Celtics-Pacers and Wolves-Mavericks. Let’s dive in.

Which player has impressed you most through two rounds?

Seerat Sohi: Players to average 29/5.5/5.5 on 50 percent shooting in the playoffs and make it to the conference finals? Michael Jordan, LeBron James, Jerry West, Kobe Bryant, Nikola Jokic, and now Anthony Edwards (OK, technically 28.9), who was also the Timberwolves’ best Jamal Murray stopper. Edwards’s movements are Jordan-esque. His efficiency and aggression hearken back to ’06 Dwyane Wade. And who else does making big fourth-quarter plays in a Game 7 despite going 6-for-24 remind you of? Edwards, next in a generational line of captivating shooting guards, is the face of these playoffs—and maybe, in a few weeks, the NBA.

Zach Kram: The Mavericks are a team-best plus-87 when Dereck Lively II is on the court and a team-worst minus-47 when he’s off. Rookies aren’t supposed to have this sort of impact in the playoffs.

Michael Pina: So many candidates, but I have to go with Jalen Brunson. The leadership, shotmaking, intelligence, poise, force, and resilience that he displayed, carrying the city of New York on his back for the past few weeks, is something I won’t forget anytime soon.

Danny Chau: P.J. Washington. Deadline acquisitions rarely make this much of a difference in the postseason, let alone the acquisition of a player who had no playoff experience prior to the trade. The Mavericks targeted size, athleticism, and untapped shotmaking potential when they traded for Washington. He’s exceeded any and all expectations, becoming a de facto third option feasting off the double coverages that Luka Doncic has seen to this point. Time will tell whether Washington is destined for the Deadline Pantheon that includes Marc Gasol and Rasheed Wallace, but he’s getting closer.

Isaac Levy-Rubinett: I can’t believe I’m saying this, but … Kyrie Irving? Through Dallas’s first two playoff rounds, Irving has played ferocious defense, gotten his teammates rolling as a facilitator, and generally done whatever the Mavericks have needed from him. He also improved to 14-0 in his career in closeout games, burnishing (and adding a new layer to) the legacy of Playoff Kyrie.

Fill in the blank: Mavs-Wolves will come down to _____?

Pina: Luka Doncic’s body. After surviving the Dorture Chamber, can this dude’s sprained knee physically hold up against an intense, oppressive defense that won’t let any forays into the paint go by without inflicting physical pain?

Chau: Which team’s defensive back line holds up best amid immense pressure. The Wolves attempted shots around the rim at a higher rate than any other team in the second round, benefiting from the lack of elite rim protectors in their first two series. Now, Minnesota will face a team in Dallas that has constructed a formidable switching defense built off the security that Dereck Lively II and Daniel Gafford have instilled around the rim. Doncic slowly but surely sussed out the Thunder defense in the second round; Anthony Edwards is still adjusting to life as a superstar, having to read double-teams possession after possession. How each team’s bigs hold up will loom large.

Levy-Rubinett: How much Dallas can score. Luka has quietly been a little up-and-down (and banged up) in these playoffs, but it hasn’t mattered because the rest of the Mavs have been cooking offensively. P.J. Washington is playing like a star, Derrick Jones Jr. is raining 3s, and Daniel Gafford looks like Godzilla rampaging to the rim. But Dallas’s role players will have a much tougher time against the Wolves’ huge and swarming defense—are they up to the task?

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Kram: Dallas’s defense on Karl-Anthony Towns, who presents a completely different challenge than any big man the Mavericks have faced in the playoffs thus far. I’m not sure how well their aggressive rotations will hold up when confronted with a legitimate 7-foot spacer.

Sohi: The other Wolves, and how much they can take on Anthony Edwards’s air of perpetual determination. Dallas, the NBA’s top defense in the final 15 games of the regular season, is bigger and more athletic than Denver. Daniel Gafford and Dereck Lively II give Dallas perpetual rim protection and two guys who can come closer to matching Minnesota’s force on the boards. The Mavericks don’t have a brick wall like Aaron Gordon to impede Edwards on drives, but they have more collective variability, quickness, size, and length between P.J. Washington, Josh Green, and Derrick Jones Jr., who will also make life harder for Mike Conley and Co. than a one-legged Murray and Michael Porter Jr. could.

On a scale of 1 to 10, what’s your confidence level in the Celtics?

Kram: 8. That number would’ve been a 9 before the playoffs began, and it’s edged downward only because of the uncertainty around Kristaps Porzingis’s return from injury; otherwise, the Celtics have taken care of (admittedly easy) business, giving no further reasons for concern for the league’s best team on paper.

Sohi: 6. How do I feel about the Celtics against the Pacers, glimmering in sweat, fresh off two fortifying elimination wins against a Knicks team that pushed them to the edge and helped them prove they could transcend it? A Pacers team fresh off collectively shaking their road woes in Madison Square Garden, of all places? A Pacers team that is honing the Haliburton-Siakam-Turner three-man game and making the defensive strides you’d expect from a team that has surrounded Tyrese Haliburton with plus defenders since February? A Pacers team that can play five-out, against a Celtics team that will be without Porzingis for at least two games? Against a Celtics team that has coasted through the playoffs, playing just one crunch-time minute, with its star player shooting 28.1 percent from beyond the arc? Pray tell, what reason could I possibly have for not feeling confident in the Celtics?

Pina: 8. The Celtics have a massive edge on both ends in the conference finals, with Porzingis reportedly set to return during the series and, presumably, be in good enough shape to contribute at a high level in the Finals.

Chau: 7—confident, but not particularly jazzed! It will be dull until it isn’t. The Celtics have been the best team in the league all season, and the most effective after two rounds of the playoffs. At some point, it’ll start to feel as impressive as the numbers bear out. The Pacers create and invite variance unlike any other team—what were survival tactics to Miami and Cleveland are hard-coded into the Pacers’ ethos. If Indiana can hold up even a little bit defensively, it will always have a chance to pull off a win. It’s just, four wins sounds a bit daunting against these Celtics.

Levy-Rubinett: 8. The Celtics are so talented that it becomes easy to nitpick. But the reality is, they are a historically great regular-season team that has lost just two games en route to the conference finals.

What’s one bold prediction you have for the conference finals?

Kram: Neither series will last longer than five games, setting up a long wait until the Finals begin.

Levy-Rubinett: The Wolves backslide after their emphatic win over Denver, renewing questions about the fit with Karl-Anthony Towns and Rudy Gobert.

Chau: On the final day of May, 24 years ago, in Game 5 of the 2000 Eastern Conference finals, Travis Best played arguably the best game of his career, scoring 24 points in just under 27 minutes off the bench in a pivotal Pacers win—putting on for all the short kings in the world. I’m not sure if this is all that bold anymore, but methinks T.J. McConnell will have a Travis Best moment against the Celtics, setting a new record for Tommy Points earned by an opponent.

Pina: Kyrie Irving will score the most total points in the Western Conference finals.

Sohi: The Timberwolves will drop their first game to Dallas, courtesy of an emotional hangover. You could hear them celebrating while Michael Malone gave a curmudgeonly postgame interview. While Karl-Anthony Towns reflected on the team’s tortured history, Anthony Edwards, man of destiny, insisted he forget it, perhaps because he knows: A generational curse is being lifted, but there’s usually a period of fatigue before lightness kicks in. Minnesota has only two days to regroup, remember there are still two series to win before it can hoist the Larry O’Brien Trophy, and scout a Mavericks team with plenty of their own losses to avenge.

Which recently eliminated team should feel the best about their chances next season: the Knicks, Thunder, or Nuggets?

Kram: The Nuggets, who still have Nikola Jokic in his prime—but this might be the last year I’d choose them ahead of the rising Thunder.

Chau: The Nuggets are an obvious answer for as long as Jokic remains in his prime, but I can’t help but feel excited for what’s to come in Oklahoma City. We know how these things can and have ended. No path to a championship is linear. But the Thunder core can enter the offseason with a better idea of where each star has to grow, and the Thunder are perhaps better equipped than any other team in NBA history to make a swing for elite talent. It must be a strange, powerful feeling to recognize precisely how one must improve and have all the resources to get there.

Sohi: Have you heard the Thunder are the youngest team in NBA history to get out of the first round? In all seriousness, the Thunder, who were starting to turn the corner on their shooting jitters before P.J. Washington ended their season, are the easy, obvious answer. Kentavious Caldwell-Pope has a player option this year, and Denver’s depth was already thinning faster than Trae Young’s hair.

Levy-Rubinett: I have to go with the Nuggets, who will return the best player alive and likely one of the best starting lineups in basketball. The Thunder and Knicks had incredible, feel-good seasons, but both teams have work to do in order to become something more.

Pina: The Nuggets have Nikola Jokic, so, yeah: the Nuggets.

What is your dream Finals matchup and why?

Kram: Forget all the other strategic and narrative fascinations in a potential Celtics-Wolves series—that matchup would also guarantee that either Al Horford or Mike Conley, two of the league’s most beloved veterans, would finally win a ring.

Pina: Celtics-Wolves would be a fascinating stylistic clash. In addition to giving us the regular season’s best offense vs. best defense, we’d also get to see how Minnesota fares against a barrage of 3s and athleticism on the wing, which is so different from how the Nuggets are built and like to attack.

Sohi: Celtics-Wolves. A historically great defense versus a historically great offense (if Porzingis is healthy). A regular-season series that went to overtime twice, with both teams splitting 1-1, and a total score of 236-234, favoring Boston.

Levy-Rubinett: Celtics-Wolves. Minnesota’s defense would pose a fitting final challenge for Boston, and the Celtics would be the ultimate final boss for the playoffs’ most ascendant team.

Chau: Celtics-Wolves. The hum of prolonged excellence against the primal scream of an unforeseen arrival. Gimme that.