For Game 3, the dominant Celtics will be underdogs for just 4th time in 99 games

On Jan. 11, the Boston Celtics were 2-point underdogs against the Milwaukee Bucks. That’s the same day Bill Belichick was fired by the New England Patriots. The NFL playoffs would start two days later and Jim Harbaugh was still at Michigan just three days after winning a national title.

It was a while ago. And for the five months that followed, the Celtics were favored in almost every single basketball game they played.

The Celtics are 1.5-point underdogs at BetMGM for Wednesday’s Game 3 of the NBA Finals against the Dallas Mavericks, and that’s notable. Since Jan. 11, the Celtics have played 60 games and were favored in 59 of them, according to Covers.com’s game log. They were underdogs just three times all regular season and they have yet to be underdogs in a playoff game.

There are a lot of ways to illustrate the Celtics’ dominance — and perhaps their easy path to being up 2-0 in the NBA Finals — but being underdogs just one time in their last 60 games is pretty amazing.

Boston favored in nearly every game

Being underdogs is something the Celtics haven’t experienced since early April. Again against the Bucks, they were 3.5-point underdogs on April 9. That came late in the regular season with the No. 1 seed already long clinched. The Celtics won the East by 14 games.

Before that, the only other time the Celtics were underdogs was Dec. 20. They were 3.5-point underdogs at the Sacramento Kings with Jayson Tatum out of the lineup. The Celtics won 144-119.

Jayson Tatum and the Celtics are in the rare position of being underdogs for Game 3. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)

The NBA is not set up for one team to be favored in 95 of 98 games, especially when the postseason is factored in. There are too many good teams around the league. There are also plenty of nights in the regular season when a team is playing the second game of a back-to-back, or at the end of a long road trip or with multiple players out with injury. Oddsmakers usually don’t blindly post a team as a favorite, even a very good one, when it’s in a bad spot.

The Celtics didn’t cover all of those spreads as favorites, but just being favored game in and game out…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/for-game-3-the-dominant-celtics-will-be-underdogs-for-just-4th-time-in-99-games-133520965.html

Author : Yahoo Sports

Publish date : 2024-06-11 13:35:20

Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.