Are the Celtics on the easiest path to the NBA Finals ever?

Indiana Pacers point guard Tyrese Haliburton is unlikely to play in Game 3 of the Eastern Conference Finals, raising further concerns about the Boston Celtics' chances of making the NBA Finals.

With Haliburton sidelined for some time with a left hamstring injury in January, the Celtics will enter three straight close games without their best players. Jimmy Butler missed the Miami Heat's opening five-game loss to Boston, and Donovan Mitchell missed the Cleveland Cavaliers' final two losses of five games in the Eastern Conference semifinals.

Even if Haliburton injures his leg, is this the easiest path to the NBA Finals?

At least not statistically. Boston's opponents — the Heat (46-36), Cavaliers (48-34) and Pacers (47-35) — have averaged 47 wins each. Since the league expanded to its current 16-team format in the 1984 playoffs, 18 NBA finalists have faced teams with a lower average (or the equivalent) through three rounds.

182020 Los Angeles Lakers (46.9)

T152016 Golden State Warriors (46.7), 2001 Philadelphia 76ers (46.7), 1985 Boston Celtics (46.7)

141989 Detroit Pistons (46)

131986 Boston Celtics (45.7)

122003 New Jersey Nets (45.3)

T102007 Cleveland Cavaliers (45), 2002 New Jersey Nets (45)

91995 Orlando Magic (44.7)

81991 Chicago Bulls (44.3)

T62013 Miami Heat (44), 1983-84 Boston Celtics (44)

Five1988 Los Angeles Lakers (43.7)

T32023 Denver Nuggets (43.3), 1985 Los Angeles Lakers (43.3)

21984 Los Angeles Lakers (40.7)

11987 Los Angeles Lakers (39.3)

A few observations:

• The years between Michael Jordan's final game with the Chicago Bulls and LeBron James' peak were tough times in the Eastern Conference. The 2003 New Jersey Nets won 49 games and their opponents averaged 45.3 wins. Their two wins over the Spurs in the NBA Finals were a miracle.

• The Western Conference during the heyday of the 1980s Lakers led by Magic Johnson: One-One.

• Injuries are hard to analyze because players in the 1980s played long periods with bad legs, such as Larry Drew, the starting point guard for the 1984 Kansas City Kings, who played all three games of their first-round series against the Lakers with what he later said was “only 60 percent of my knee and I was limping along.” No box score can adequately account for these health issues.

• Ten of the 18 teams have won, so preparation has little to do with whether or not you deserve to win.

• Many of these teams were powerhouses: 11 teams won 62 or more games, including the 1985 Lakers (65-17), 1986 Celtics (67-15), 2013 Heat (66-16) and 2016 Warriors (73-9). These teams often lost multiple times to their own conference teams during the regular season, often in the easy win streak.

• The opposite is true for teams with tougher roads. The eight toughest roads to the NBA Finals include the 1995 Rockets (6th seed) and the 2020 Heat (5th seed), two of the four lowest seeds to reach the title series. Higher seeds play teams with fewer wins, and lower seeds play teams with more wins. So it makes sense that the Celtics, with 64 wins, 14 more than any team in the conference, would face an easier schedule. Here's the list of the toughest roads:

Either or both of the No. 5-seeded Mavericks and No. 6-seeded Pacers could join the list of toughest roads to the NBA Finals this year. Indiana is down 2-0 in the series against Boston, but Dallas is coming off a thrilling Game 2 win and now leads by the same margin against the Minnesota Timberwolves in the Western Conference Finals.

If the Mavericks win this season, we'll all celebrate their hard-won path to victory, but that story will likely be forgotten with time as the mythical debate begins about when Luka Doncic officially broke through.

It's well-known that the West was tough in the 2000s, but no one is meaningfully debating how the Lakers struggled in the early 2000s. The conversation is centered around the dominance of Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O'Neal, one of the worst officiated games in NBA history, Game 6 of the 2002 Western Conference Finals, and the league's officiating scandals.

Every champion has a story, but Boston could end up being a cupcake this season. It all depends on how the Celtics go from here. Will the Timberwolves and Mavericks be big threats in the next round? Will Jayson Tatum walk away with the Finals MVP and leave his name in Celtics lore? Will the health discussion be different if Kristaps Porzingis doesn't get healthy and Boston wins? What if the Celtics do it again in the future and build a dynasty of their own?

The schedule tells the story of Boston right nowMaybe not in two weeks. Maybe not in two years. Unless they don't win it and this team is still searching for its first title, then they'll be the forever bridesmaids who never get the job done because injuries and random events do most of the work.

What we know now is that the Celtics are one of the few teams who have never faced a 50-win opponent on their way to the NBA Finals, and if Haliburton is unable to return, they will be the only team able to beat those opponents without having their best player on the court in a series-deciding game.

Perhaps even more fortunate for the Celtics is the injuries they have coming into the game against the Heat, Cavaliers and Pacers. Indiana beat Giannis Antetokounmpo-less Milwaukee and New York, which was missing half its rotation. Joel Embiid's knee injury impacted Philadelphia's seeding. and The ability to get through the first round.

Injuries are part of the process. No one remembers the 1985 Lakers beating the Phoenix Suns in the first round without their three best players. Los Angeles' Bob McAdoo said, “We just had to get through it.” In the series“I'm not going to get political here and say, 'Oh, they're a great team,' because they don't have Walter Davis, James Edwards, Larry Nance. Without those guys, we would have won.”

Excerpt from a UPI article about the same Lakers-Denver Western Conference Finals game:[Alex] English isn't the Nugget's only injured player, but he is the most serious. Others include Calvin Nutt, Mike Evans and Lafayette Lever with knee injuries, Dan Issel with a thigh contusion and Wayne Cooper with injured ribs. But all we'll talk about is the Lakers' revenge against the Celtics in the 1985 NBA Finals.

We don't need decades to forget how it all came together. Who would argue that the 2022 Warriors beat the Nuggets without Jamal Murray, the Grizzlies without Ja Morant and the Mavericks with a waning Doncic? No, they taught the Celtics a lesson in the NBA Finals and restored their dynasty.

Last year, Denver beat the Timberwolves without Jaden McDaniels and Naz Reid, beat the Suns without Chris Paul missing four games and Deandre Ayton in the finals, and beat the Lakers with LeBron James suffering a foot injury two doctors said he needed surgery on. We quickly established Nikola Jokic as the greatest player of all time and his Nuggets as a team with dynasty potential.

The only absence we really discuss seems to be Jordan's absence in the mid-1990s, when his baseball career gave the Rockets a wide berth in their chances to win a championship. We don't credit Orlando's run to the 1995 NBA Finals, even though Jordan was on the court for all six games of the series. Maybe it's all just mystical.

Maybe it's just a story we tell, but a champion is a champion, and as long as Boston is a champion, it will be a champion.