OPINION By Sophie LeMay

The finals series see-sawed until Game 6, when the Golden State Warriors fought for the title and won it. Both teams have been stealing home games from the other, but the Warriors finally defeated the Celtics. 

  I, along with many others, believed that it would be a blow-out series on Golden State’s side, considering the lineup of all stars and experienced players on the roster. However, the Celtics held on, and showed their stamina despite the lack experience.

  Speaking of experience, that was one of the main reasons why people did not have hope in the Celtics doing well in the finals. The Celtics roster is filled with young players who are in the beginning of their superstardom and had not yet experienced the pressure of the championship finals yet, compared to the Warriors who have been in 6 out of the last 8 championship finals series.

  However, despite the inexperience of the Celtics, they have shown that they are a real challenger to the team in the west. The series was pretty even with both teams trading wins back and forth, but in order for the Celtics to have taken it all the way to the title, they needed to fix a few things with how they were playing.

  First of all, the turnovers in each game throughout this whole series have been absolutely insane. The team has had multiple games this series with +10 turnovers. As a coach, that should be one of the first things that should be focused on improving on before the next game, but that did not happen. The Celtics finished game 5 with a total of 18 turnovers throughout the game. Hopefully, this loss causes the team to understand the consequences of not fixing their worst habit.

  Star Jayson Tatum said, “We’re hard to beat when we don’t turn the ball over. And clearly we’re easy to beat when we turn the ball over.”

  The turnovers are also caused by rushed and messy play. It happens too often that the team slows down the tempo of the game and attempts to pick it up, causing stupid mistakes. In order to reduce the number of mishaps, they need to establish and control the pace of the game from the start, and keep that throughout the game.

  Lastly, the teams have showed inconsistent quarters. Games have shown that the Warriors control the third quarter, and take that as their chance to gain a lead. On the other side, the Celts were able to take over in the fourth quite a bit. There have been many times already in the series where one team over-scores another by double-digits in a quarter. The Celts needed to maintain their lead throughout each quarter and could not allow the Warriors to gain a significant lead, forcing them to catch up in the fourth. This did not occur.

  In order to bring the championship title to Boston next year, the Celtics need to fix a few things in their playbook, and play the game that I know they are able to play.