Rick Carlisle: Celtics ‘have a legitimate chance to get to the Finals’

Rick Carlisle is buying all the Boston Celtics stock he can afford.

After they defeated his Dallas Mavericks by the final of 111-98 on Monday, Carlisle said he believes the Celtics have ‘a legitimate chance’ of making it to the NBA Finals, per Bobby Karalla of Mavs.com.

Carlisle on the Celtics: "They've got a legitimate chance to get to the Finals with that team."

— Bobby Karalla (@bobbykaralla) February 14, 2017

Carlisle may be a bit of a homer here as he played in Boston for three seasons in the ’80s and was teammates there with GM Danny Ainge. Celtics starting forward Jae Crowder also used to play for Carlisle on the Mavs.

But the Celtics are second in the Eastern Conference at 36-19 on the year, have an emerging superstar in Isaiah Thomas, and play tenacious team basketball under an intelligent young head coach in Brad Stevens. As such, Boston has a good chance of living up to the assessment of Carlisle (who hasn’t been quite as laudatory of his own team this season) even if they’ll have to get past the flying death machine known as LeBron James to do so.