Charles Barkley Makes Strong Claim After Celtics-Heat Game 1

If you ask Charles Barkley, “championship or bust” might be putting it mildly for the Celtics this postseason.

Boston ripped through the regular season, securing the Eastern Conference’s No. 1 seed with ease while posting the NBA’s best record. And the Celtics looked every bit like the league’s elite Sunday when they stomped on the Miami Heat in Game 1 of the teams’ first-round series.

Barkley was asked to share a takeaway from the matinee matchup at TD Garden, and the Basketball Hall of Famer couldn’t have been any clearer about his expectations for the C’s.

“The Celtics are gonna win the world championship,” Barkley said on TNT. “They’ve been the best team in the NBA all year. Man, they’re gonna be tough to beat. They got everything you need. I’ll be totally, totally shocked if they don’t win the championship. I look at Denver in the West. It’s the one team that I believe can compete with them. But if the Boston Celtics don’t win the championship, it would be a total gag job.”

The final note from Barkley might be a tad strong, as it wouldn’t be the worst look for the Celtics if they lost the Finals to the Nuggets in a long, hard-fought series. But Boston has absolutely no excuse to not at least reach the league’s biggest stage, and any exit short of it would be a massive failure for Joe Mazzulla’s group.

The Celtics now are 11 wins away from securing a second Finals appearance in three years. Boston will try to cut that number down to 10 on Wednesday when it hosts Miami for Game 2.