Our Tuesday Teasings column is off to a circumstantially slow start, but we will get it going again today. Awhile ago, we commented on the likelihood of the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Oklahoma City Thunder meeting in the NBA Finals and came to the conclusion that it just wasn’t possible or practical, given the nature of the NBA as it has shown itself since the mid-1990s. Well, both teams just swept their first series.

Alas, no other NBA teams could pull this off, including the defending champion Boston Celtics or the TV darlings from San Francisco. Of course, the Golden State Warriors are the mere seventh seed in the Western Conference, so they weren’t expected to sweep, but even finding them up 3-1 on the No. 2-seeded Houston Rockets pushes the credibility of the league which has to issue daily apologies for bad officiating.

But we digress: what about the Cavs and the Thunder? Can they do the improbable in the modern NBA and reach the Finals together despite playing in such low-rated TV markets? Well, they’re off to a good start. OKC can now rest before facing the winner of the Denver/Los Angeles the Lesser series, which is tied at two wins apiece. Both the Nuggets and the Clippers have potential to emerge victorious in Round Two, though.

Denver won the title in 2023 and has international TV appeal, while LAC has some serious star appeal. Meanwhile, Cleveland awaits the victor of the Indiana/Milwaukee series, which the Pacers lead 3-1 right now. The Bucks won the title in 2021 with their own international star, but Indiana is still … Indiana. The Pacers play in the No. 25 TV market, which is only slightly worse than the Cavs’ own 19th-ranked market.

In the end, we still expect the Celtics to win the Eastern Conference, and Boston is up 3-1 right now heading back home for Game 5. That series is probably done, in practicality. But expect the NBA to milk the potential of a Round Two matchup between the Celtics and the New York Knicks; a seven-game series there could drain Boston for its showdown with Cleveland in the Eastern Conference Finals … and the NBA Finals, too.

The OKC equation is different, as the Thunder have a significant sabermetric advantage on every other team in the Western Conference—to the tune of at least a 7.5-point edge on a neutral court for every game against any opponent. That will be hard for the league to overcome with its dubious officiating. Less than a half a point separates the second through fifth teams in the West, so it doesn’t really matter for OKC who it plays.

So, this is our “revised” tease here: we’re still expecting an Boston-OKC matchup in the NBA Finals.