Three reasons why Celtics, not Nuggets, are relatively heavy NBA title favorites right now

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Tuesday was perhaps the best night of the season so far for Celtics skeptics. A 22-point fourth quarter lead disappeared in less than nine minutes. That stretch was something of a greatest hits album of blown Celtics leads. They settled for jumpers. They didn’t adjust to an opposing role player, in this case Dean Wade, suddenly getting hotter than the surface of the sun. Jaylen Brown was nowhere to be seen. When critics pick against the 48-13 Celtics as championship favorites, they point to stretches like this. Nine of those 13 losses have come in NBA-defined “clutch” situations.

One of those losses came against the defending champion Denver Nuggets in yet another game that more or less followed the expected script. Boston led most of the way. Denver closed the gap in the second half. Boston found itself ahead 98-95 with a bit less than five minutes to play. Nikola Jokic out-executed them the rest of the way as the Nuggets went on a 7-2 run to steal the victory. As close as the game was, Denver doesn’t generate those same late-game doubts. Winning a championship inspires such confidence. NBA history tells us that once you’ve won the first, you’re usually in pretty good shape to win the second, and potentially more. This is a league defined by dynasties.

The books don’t agree. Not only is Boston the championship favorite over Denver at the moment, their odds aren’t all that close. At FanDuel, for instance, Boston’s +210 odds to win it all are half of Denver’s +420 line. This is more or less in line with what we’ve seen over the past few years. The Celtics have been favored in their last seven playoff series, and while their odds have fluctuated, they’ve spent the better part of the past two calendar years as championship favorites or something relatively close. Vegas loves the Celtics. They’ve been largely indifferent towards the Nuggets. The Phoenix Suns were favored over the Nuggets in the second round a season ago despite Denver having the Western Conference’s No. 1 seed. They were only a -160 favorite over the play-in Lakers in the…

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Source link : https://www.cbssports.com/nba/news/three-reasons-why-celtics-not-nuggets-are-relatively-heavy-nba-title-favorites-right-now/

Author : Sam Quinn

Publish date : 2024-03-07 22:10:25

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