Celtics Favored for NBA Title; Longshot Teams Worth Watching
Category
🥇
SportsTranscript
00:00 Brian, taking a look here at the NBA Championship odds at the FanDuel Sportsbook.
00:03 You take a look at the Boston Celtics at a plus 210 price, the clear favorites here,
00:07 followed by the Denver Nuggets at a plus 420. It's easy to say like, yes,
00:10 Boston's the best team in the East and maybe the Denver Nuggets the best in the West.
00:14 Are there any teams a little bit down that leaderboard here, at least the
00:17 market that you might be lining up and saying, you know what, I'll take a flyer on the Phoenix Suns,
00:22 OKC, maybe even the Miami Heat at this point. Are there any dogs here at some of these prices that
00:26 you say, you know what, I might want to look at these? Yeah, probably those two teams at plus
00:31 3200, the Heat and the Mavericks. Those are the ones that I've been sort of looking at as long
00:35 shots. The Mavericks, not great as of late, but I did like them coming out of the trade deadline,
00:42 walking away with Daniel Gafford in particular and also P.J. Washington. But I do think that
00:48 they're interesting because they can make a run. Their schedule is really soft. If you look at it,
00:53 they have one of the seven or eight softer schedules in the NBA for the rest of the season.
00:57 Then they have Luka Doncic, who I think should be an MVP candidate and on every ballot possible.
01:01 I think he could even be the MVP this year, depending on how the last several months shake
01:06 out. And then with the Heat, the biggest difference to me is that they fixed their
01:10 fourth quarter problem, as I tweeted out yesterday, like their point differential in the fourth
01:14 quarter, the last 11 fourth quarters that they play, they're plus 47 and they're 10 and one in
01:19 these fourth quarters. Before that, they were 18 and 32 and minus 87 or something along those lines.
01:24 If they were one of the worst fourth quarter teams in basketball lately, they've been one of the best.
01:28 And all I've said about that team this season is if they figure out the fourth quarter stuff,
01:33 then they'll be able to get clicking. So I think you have to look at them, especially
01:38 more so than the Mavericks, because the Western Conference has a little bit more clutter in it.
01:42 Whereas in the Eastern Conference, they're kind of Boston's kryptonite and Boston is a heavy
01:48 favorite. But as we saw against the Cavs, maybe they're also front runners. And sometimes when
01:54 you're whooping everybody during the regular season, it doesn't really benefit you that much
01:58 in the playoffs because you have to play more close games. And we've sort of seen this backfire
02:02 on this team in particular. So if you're looking at their rivals in the Eastern Conference,
02:08 the Knicks are another team that I would be interested in if they were healthy.
02:12 But now I have questions about because we don't have a real update on Julius Randle.
02:17 OG and Anubis supposed to be back at some point, but it looks like there's going to be too much
02:21 around the injury front for me to take them seriously in terms of contenders. And the Heat
02:25 have done it before multiple times in the last four years. They're the team that I'd probably
02:29 look at in the East as a long shot if you want to sort of fade Boston and fade Milwaukee for that
02:34 matter.