The Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Clippers are set to square off in an East-West showdown at Staples Center on Wednesday night, and Kawhi Leonard and Paul George are expected to share the floor for the first time this season in the process.
The Celtics will be without Gordon Hayward, who is sidelined with a fractured hand, so they are not at full strength, but Boston has still managed to look pretty good even in his absence.
So, is this otherwise meaningless November matchup actually a potential NBA Finals preview?
The Clippers were the favorite to win the championship coming into this season. Yes, they have gotten off to a rather so-so 9-5 start, but George just returned three games ago, and Leonard has been sidelined for the last three contests (and has missed extra time this season due to load management).
So, that 9-5 record is misleading.
Most likely, this is the best team in the NBA, so many people still expect Los Angeles to reach the NBA Finals.
But what about Boston?
When the C's lost Kyrie Irving, Al Horford, Marcus Morris, Terry Rozier and Aron Baynes this past summer, their prognosis for the 2019-20 campaign did not look too good.
Sure, they replaced Irving with Kemba Walker, but the departures of Horford (to the Philadelphia 76ers, which made it a double whammy) and Baynes left a massive hole in the middle, and the Celtics figured to miss the scoring of Morris and Rozier.
Instead, Boston has stampeded out of the gate and is 11-2 with a 10-game winning streak in its rearview mirror.
Hayward, before getting injured, looked fantastic. Walker has replaced just about all of Irving's production and has been a much more positive force in the locker room. Youngsters Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown have shown incredible progression. Marcus Smart is a Defensive Player of the Year candidate early on.
But can this team really make it all the way to the NBA Finals?
In the Eastern Conference, where a 35-win team may very well make the playoffs this year, anything is possible, especially with the Sixers having very clear spacing and depth issues and the Milwaukee Bucks not looking quite as good as they did a year ago without Malcolm Brogdon.
So, yes, this is a possible Finals preview, albeit one that is rather incomplete.
Again, Hayward is out, and Leonard and George have yet to even play a second of basketball with one another, so there could be some growing pains there.
Should these two clubs meet in June, you can bet that they will look very different than they do now, whether that's because of improved chemistry or some roster shuffling.
Regardless, this is definitely one of the better matchups we have seen thus far in what has been an otherwise middling season in terms of excitement through the first month.
A Celtics-Clippers Finals? It certainly has a nice ring to it, and it would definitely be a welcome change from the past five years that were thoroughly dominated by the Golden State Warriors and LeBron James.
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