NBA Future Bet (NBA Champion)
Author: Dylan Lieck | May 9, 2024 | 7:38 P.M. CST
Official Best Bet: Boston Celtics to win NBA Title -115
At the beginning of the playoffs, the Celtics were the betting favorite to win the NBA Title at around +140, and at seemed at that point to be a pretty wild price. After all the Celtics lost in the Eastern Conference Finals to the 8-seed Miami Heat last year. Over the past decade, the Boston Celtics have reached the NBA Finals just one time, falling to the Golden State Warriors in 2022. Questions about the Celtics ability to win in the playoffs were, and still are absolutely valid. Joe Mazzulla has looked far from an elite NBA head coach. Jason Tatum continued to prove he was not “that guy” in big time moments. And under this core, there’s been nothing but post-season disappointment.
Sometimes, however, the way the dominoes fall creates opportunity, and that is exactly what has happened for the Boston Celtics this post-season. The team everyone thought would be the biggest contender with the Celtics in the Eastern Conference saw their top two players hobbled by injury in the Milwaukee Bucks. Although Dame Lillard played in 4 of the 6 games in the 1st round series, Giannis did not play a single minute. And, the result was the Bucks were eliminated by an inferior Indiana Pacers team. The next best contender from Championship aspirations got knocked out in the first round as well in the Philadelphia 76ers. Yes the Sixers were the 7-seed and required a play-in victory to even get into the post-season. But, that was largely due to the absence of Embiid down the stretch of the regular season due to a knee injury. With Embiid in the lineup, Philadelphia was 31-8 going into the playoffs. Despite not being 100%, Embiid fought through the first round series to play in every single game. Unfortunately for Sixers fans, it was not enough as the New York Knicks knocked off the Sixers in 6 games. And that leads us to the third contender to the Celtics in the East; those same New York Knicks. Yes, the Knicks still have their top player healthy in Jalen Brunson (who leads the league in playoff scoring by a wide margin). However, the Knicks injuries as a whole continue to pile up. Going into this Eastern Conference Semi-Finals matchup with the Pacers, the Knicks had already lost Julius Randle and Bojan Bogdanovic for the season. They then suffered an additional blow when it was announced that their backup big man, Mitchell Robinson, suffered a season ending injury as well. They followed that up by losing O.G. Anunoby in game 2. The Knicks are literally down to a 6-man rotation, despite having a 2-0 lead over Indiana.
Thus regardless of who comes out of that series, I believe it’s fair to say that none of those teams have a legitimate shot at beating the Celtics in a 7 game series in the East. There is no 2023 Miami Heat team this year; a team playing way above their regular season level, that could potentially pull off a massive upset. All that said then, we look at the West, and we see a similar thing occurring in the thinning of the heard. The Nuggets have looked far from their championship form, going down 0-2 to the Minnesota T-Wolves. At this point it would be shocking to see them even extend this series to a 7th game, let alone win the series outright. The Clippers were the team I thought at their absolute peak would be the second best option in the west, but Kawhi Leonard de-railed that possibility real quick. The Mavs have possibly the best PLAYER in the West (other than Nikola Jokic), in Luka Doncic. And of course, he is hobbled by a knee injury that clearly has slowed him down in the post-season. So we’re left with the T-Wolves and the Thunder. Both teams playing phenomenal basketball, but very young at their core. The T-Wolves go-to player is just 22 years old, and they’ve got a number of pieces around him that are young as well. The Thunder are almost exclusively guys under the ages of 25. In fact, the only guy on either team who is legitimately in the rotation who has even been to a conference finals is Mike Connelly of the T-Wolves. Most of the young guys on both these teams are playing in the second round for the first time in their careers.
So what does that mean? Well it means Boston is almost certainly coming out of the East. And it means we are almost certainly going to get the Thunder or the T-Wolves as their opponent (with a small chance of the Dallas Mavericks). Regardless of which of those teams wins the West, the Celtics will 100% be at least a -200 favorite against ANY of those teams. In fact, if it’s the Thunder they would likely be closer to -300. And so, with that in mind, we’re getting -115 right now to win the whole thing? It’s a price we can’t pass up given all the injuries, and all the things that have happened so far this post-season.
OFFICIAL PICK: BOSTON CELTICS TO WIN THE NBA CHAMPIONSHIP (-115)
Units: 2 @ -115 odds (2.3 to win 2.0)
