“If I Had to Pick a Champion, I’d Say the Celtics”: Jalen Rose’s NBA Finals Prediction

Jalen Rose believes the Celtics will win the 2025 NBA Championship (Photo by Adam Glanzman/Getty Images)

Jalen Rose believes it’ll be the Boston Celtics who walk away as the 2025 NBA champions.

The Celtics are flying slightly under the radar this season due to trailing behind the Cleveland Cavaliers for the best record in the Eastern Conference. Furthermore, the Oklahoma City Thunder’s ridiculously good 2024–25 campaign — they lead the NBA with a 59–12 record and .831 winning percentage — has also overshadowed Boston’s solid 52–19 season.

However, Rose — a 13-year NBA veteran who is best known for being a member of the Michigan Wolverines’ “Fab Five” group — ultimately believes it’ll be the Celtics who prevail.

“If I had to pick a champion, I would say the Celtics,” said Rose in a one-on-one interview with RG on behalf of his partnership with Fanatics Sportsbook. “They’re just so good, so deep with Derrick White and Jrue Holiday locking down the backcourt, both making threes, and the wings they have.

“Remember, there were people actually saying they should break up [Jayson] Tatum and [Jaylen] Brown, which is insane,” Rose continued. “You factor in [Kristaps] Porzingis and Al Horford up front and Payton Pritchard off the bench, that if they’re healthy, they should win.”

The Celtics have split their four meetings with the Cavaliers this season, with Cleveland defeating Boston in their most recent meeting, 123–116, on Feb. 28. However, that was without Porzingis in the lineup.

It’s worth mentioning that Boston vastly outplayed the Dallas Mavericks in last year’s NBA Finals, winning the series in five games. Their average margin of victory in their wins was 12.5 points. That was without Porzingis for two of those games.

Adding to the Celtics’ already beefed-up roster is the play of Pritchard, who has emerged as the NBA’s Sixth Man of the Year favorite. The 6-foot-1 point guard is averaging a career-high 14.2 points per game on .468 from the field and .418 from beyond the arc.

While Rose is going with the Celtics to walk away as the NBA champions, he’s surprisingly picking his former team, the Denver Nuggets, to enter the NBA Finals as the Western Conference champions. Rose goes with the Nuggets over the Oklahoma City Thunder in the Western Conference Finals.

 “I would have to go with Denver and OKC in the Western Conference Finals,” said Rose. “You look in the rearview mirror and a few other teams that may have a puncher’s chance — anything could happen, such as somebody playing well or injuries.”

Rose does acknowledge Shai Gilgeous-Alexander as his MVP pick, with the 26-year-old guard averaging a league-leading 32.8 points per game to go along with an efficient 52.2% shooting from the field and 6.3 assists per game. Meanwhile, Jokic is on the verge of becoming the third player in NBA history to average a triple-double during a single season, with 29.1 points, 12.8 rebounds, and 10.3 assists per game.

“I’m going to go with the team that I’ve seen do it recently with the MVP [Jokic] that has three straight versus the team that I just saw run away with the league this year and with the guy that’s probably gonna be this year’s MVP [Gilgeous-Alexander] with the deepest team in the league in OKC,” said Rose.

The pick is a bit surprising considering the Nuggets have struggled this season, losing twice to the Washington Wizards and ranking as one of the worst defensive teams (24th in points allowed per game) after ranking sixth last year and eighth during their championship season in 2022–23.

However, Rose is very high on Jokic, who he calls the best player in the NBA since he started covering the league as an analyst in 2007. Because the Nuggets have the three-time MVP and the best player in the league, they’ll always have a chance to win despite their deficiencies.

However, Rose believes the Nuggets losing shooters like Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Reggie Jackson will play a role in them coming up short in the NBA Finals.

 “Losing a couple of shooters in the backcourt, it’s going to cost them in the playoffs because it doesn’t give Jamal Murray and the Joker the room they need,” said Rose. “I love Aaron Gordon, how he’s going to take advantage of matchups and dunk on anybody that he’s able to rim-run and compete defensively, and Michael Porter Jr. could get hot with the best of ‘em. His jumper, it just looks like it’s going in every time. They’ll be in the conversation because they have the Joker.”

Rose says if they had another shooter, the Nuggets would be his “favorite.”

 “I would say that they’re my favorite if they had that other shooter,” said Rose. “I like that Russ is giving them energy, productivity, but I just think they’re missing a backcourt shooter. They’re in the conversation.”