NBA Playoffs 2008: Boston Celtics Favored to Win 17th NBA Championship, National Basketball Association’s postseason begins
NBA Playoffs 2008: Boston Celtics Favored to Win 17th NBA Championship, National Basketball Association’s postseason begins
Bloomberg NBA Playoffs 2008 News: The Boston Celtics are favored by Las Vegas oddsmakers to win their 17th championship — and first in 22 years — as the National Basketball Association’s postseason begins today.
The Celtics finished the regular season with a league-best 66-16 record and beat all of the other 29 teams, just a year after going 24-48.
Boston has 2-to-1 odds to win the NBA title, according to Las Vegas Sports Consultants, which advises Nevada sports books on betting lines. The Los Angeles Lakers are the second choice at 3-1, followed by the Detroit Pistons at 9-2 and the defending-champion San Antonio Spurs at 6-1.
“The Celtics have been the best team all year,” Mike Seba, a senior oddsmaker for Las Vegas Sports Consultants, said in a telephone interview. “Boston has the home-court advantage all the way through, so anybody they play, they’re going to play on their court for Game 1 and Game 7. That’s huge.”
The Celtics’ 35-6 home record was the second-best in the NBA this season after Utah’s 37-4, and they may also benefit from an easier path to the NBA Finals than the other top championship contenders.
Detroit and Orlando were the only teams besides Boston in the Eastern Conference with more than 50 wins, while three teams made the playoffs without a winning record. All eight playoff teams in the Western Conference had at least 50 wins, with eighth-seeded Denver at 50-32.
“That’s the reason the Celtics would be the overall favorite to win the championship, because the East doesn’t have that same parity,” said Chuck Esposito, assistant vice president at Caesar’s Palace Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas. “You look at the West and these teams are all going to beat up on each other.”
Atlanta’s Losing Record
Boston’s first-round opponent in the East is eighth-seeded Atlanta, which has a 37-45 record and 150-1 odds to win the title. Their best-of-seven series starts tomorrow at Boston’s TD Banknorth Garden.
“The Eastern Conference would be better served if they just played a best-of-21 (series) between Boston and Detroit,” said former coach Jeff Van Gundy, who is now an NBA analyst for ESPN. “It would be a heck of a lot more interesting. I don’t think there should ever be a sub-.500 team in the playoffs.”
Van Gundy, in an interview with Bloomberg Radio’s `On the Ball’ program, said he expects the Celtics to beat the Lakers in the NBA Finals, evoking memories of the 1980s, when Boston’s Larry Bird, Kevin McHale and Robert Parish squared off against Los Angeles’s Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. The Celtics and Lakers combined to win eight titles and appear in the NBA Finals 13 times during the 1980s.
`Exciting’ Return
“For the betting and viewing public, it’s pretty exciting with those two teams at the top of both conferences.” Esposito said in a telephone interview.
The Celtics, who haven’t won a playoff series since 2003, were given 75-1 odds to win the title after last year’s finals. Their odds dropped after the offseason addition of All-Stars Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen, who joined Paul Pierce to spark the franchise’s 42-game improvement, the biggest one-year turnaround in NBA history.
“That’s why we were brought here, to help win games and get us to this point,” Allen told reporters two days ago. “I always hear stories about Larry Bird, McHale and Parish and how they wondered who their playoff opponents were in the beginning of the season because they played for this time of year. We know this is when history is made.”
Boston Celtics 2-1
Los Angeles Lakers 3-1
Detroit Pistons 9-2
San Antonio Spurs 6-1
Phoenix Suns 8-1
New Orleans Hornets 10-1
Dallas Mavericks 12-1
Utah Jazz 15-1
Orlando Magic 20-1
Cleveland Cavaliers 25-1
Houston Rockets 30-1
Denver Nuggets 40-1
Washington Wizards 40-1
Toronto Raptors 75-1
Philadelphia 76ers 100-1
Atlanta Hawks 150-1
NBA Playoffs 2008: Boston Celtics Favored to Win 17th NBA Championship, National Basketball Association’s postseason begins. Editing by Elizabeth Yang
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[...] Iflove Sports Events wrote an interesting post today on NBA Playoffs 2008: Boston Celtics Favored to Win 17th NBA …Here’s a quick excerptBloomberg NBA Playoffs 2008 News: The Boston Celtics are favored by Las Vegas oddsmakers to win their 17th championship — and first in 22 years — as the National Basketball Association’s postseason begins today. … [...]