Simulation Station: How likely is a Celtics-Thunder Finals matchup? originally appeared on NBC Sports Boston
The Boston Celtics will close out their regular season series versus the Oklahoma City Thunder on Wednesday night at TD Garden, but it might not be the last time these two teams play each other this season.
If there are more Celtics-Thunder games beyond this week, they would come in the 2025 NBA Finals, and it wouldn’t be surprising if that’s the matchup in June.
The Thunder have led the Western Conference standings all season and currently have a 53-12 record – 11 games up on the second-place Denver Nuggets. The defending champion Celtics are in second place in the Eastern Conference with a 47-16 record – eight games behind the first-place Cleveland Cavaliers.
The Celtics and Thunder are the only two teams that rank top-five in both offensive and defensive rating. OKC actually leads the league in 22 different statistical categories.
Our friends at Strat-O-Matic simulated the rest of the season and the 2025 playoffs 100 times, and the second-most common Finals matchup was Celtics vs. Thunder. It happened in 20 of the 100 simulations, and the Thunder won 13 of those series.
Overall, the Celtics made the Finals in 28 of the 100 simulations and won the championship 14 times.
The last team to repeat as champions was the 2016-17 and 2017-18 Golden State Warriors. The last time the league had a six-year streak of a different champion was 1975-80.
The Celtics have won a record 18 championships, but the last time the franchise repeated was in 1967-68 and 1968-69 – the final two titles of Bill Russell’s Hall of Fame career.
