NBA futures betting for the Championship has never been more open. Today, we break down the chances of the consensus favourites from each conference: the Golden State Warriors and the Cleveland Cavaliers.
February 27, 2015
Both the pundits and the media at large have settled on the Golden State Warriors and the Cleveland Cavaliers as consensus favourites to meet in the Finals. It’s the type of matchup that makes people forget their families for a week.
In the Western Conference, the Golden State Warriors started the season as a dangerous young team with a bright rookie head coach in Steve Kerr. We expected them to build on their 51 wins last season, and perhaps advance another round in the playoffs.
Nobody expected them to erupt with a 23-3 record, matching an all-time mark set by the 1996 Chicago Bulls (in fairness, those Bulls extended that streak to a ludicrous 41-3). The Warriors have also been a top 5 defensive team consistently. In a Conference with an unprecedented eight contenders, Golden State has played most like the top dog. Their consistency, incredible outside shooting and their balanced, unselfish play means no team has yet to challenge that status.
In the Eastern Conference, the star studded Cleveland Cavaliers are Jekyll and Hyde. The consensus preseason favourites, the Cavaliers were disappointing at first with a terrible 5-7 record. Then, they won eight in a row and all was well. Next, they lost nine of ten games and the world was ending.
Now, they’ve won 18 of their past 20 games including a massive win in Golden State last night. LeBron James remains the league’s undisputed best player. He’s in his prime and flanked by two bona fide All-Stars in Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love, who are finally figuring out how to play with James. They’ve made trades that addressed their primary weaknesses (lack of post defense and rim protection) and are now primed for a championship run.
Without question, the Cleveland Cavaliers are the most dangerous team in the NBA.
However, while both Cleveland and Golden State have been the best of their respective conferences, they are not a lock to meet in the Finals. The field of contenders is so abnormally deep this year that one could see either the Cavs or Warriors losing in a seven game series.
Welcome to the 2014-2015 NBA season, where everything is up in the air. Let’s break down the case for Golden State’s and Cleveland’s championship hopes.
Golden State’s Case:
Stephen Curry is like a walking, talking video game. His game is completely unique in NBA history. A guy who takes shots with such a high degree of difficulty simply should not be this efficient at making them. He makes over 40% of his three point attempts, shoots 49% from the field and is the deadliest shooter at the point guard position in a league that’s overflowing with them.
Next to him, we find young shooting guard Klay Thompson who has just exploded in a rainbow of ridiculous outside shooting. Remember Curry’s shooting stats? Here’s Thompson’s: 44% from three point range, 47% from the field overall, and almost every shot is outside of 18 feet.
He broke Twitter and the basketball media last month with 37 points in a single quarter against Sacramento. In a QUARTER! Twelve minutes of an NBA game and he hit 13 straight shots and NINE of them were threes! Needless to say, it’s an NBA record.
A year ago, the Warriors head coach at the time claimed “The Splash Brothers” were the greatest shooting backcourt in NBA history. We scoffed at him then. After all, don’t these two have a lot more to prove first?
Now, it doesn’t look like misguided hyperbole from a protective coach. Steph Curry and Klay Thompson are absolutely on their way to becoming the finest pure shooting backcourt in NBA history. They’re not there yet, but their list of competitors grows thin.
Combined with a truly team-first dynamic, an excellent cast of versatile role players, a highly promising young coach with five Championship rings as a player, and the best home crowd in the NBA, the Golden State Warriors are the real deal.
However: they live and die with Andrew Bogut’s injuries. Their only real rim protector, the Aussie center is disproportionally important to Golden State’s title hopes. But the problem is Bogut is highly injury-prone. If he’s out come playoff time, it represents a significant problem for the Warriors. Power forward David Lee is a gifted low post scorer and rebounder, but he is one of the most atrocious defenders in the entire NBA.
There is no depth in the Warriors frontcourt if Bogut is unavailable. Let’s not forget: the Western Conference path to the Finals is like a gauntlet of pain. Marc Gasol, Dwight Howard, LaMarcus Aldridge and some guy named Tim Duncan are just a few centers that Golden State can count on meeting come playoff time.
If Bogut isn’t 100%, that’s big trouble in a Conference that is overflowing with the NBA’s finest big men.
Cleveland’s Case:
LeBron James. Isn’t that enough? In a league dominated by superstars, LeBron is the undisputed best player. Let’s put it this way: last year’s Miami Heat team, with LeBron James, finished with a 54-28 regular season record.
LeBron jumped ship over the summer and returned to Cleveland. This season, Miami are sitting on a terrible 25-31 record with basically the exact same team minus LeBron. They’re barely in the playoffs in a historically bad Conference. With James, the Miami Heat played in four straight NBA Finals.
The best players matter more in the NBA than any other sport. It’s just that simple, and in LeBron James Cleveland has the unanimous best player.
They have depth and scoring chops in spades with Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love. They addressed their big man void with shrewd signings in Timofey Mozgov and Kendrick Perkins. They have perimeter defending and shooting sorted. And their early season growing pains with an unhappy Kevin Love seem to be in the past.
However, let’s address the 800-pound elephant in the room: inexperience.
Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love are incredibly talented All-Stars. But together, they have played in exactly ZERO NBA playoff games in a combined ten NBA seasons. For a pair of stars as celebrated as these two, that is utterly unacceptable.
They may have the game, but do they have the brains? Are they mentally ready for a level of basketball that they have never experienced before?
But at least they’ve got NBA experience. The same cannot be said for their head coach. A daisy fresh rookie, David Blatt has never coached or even played in a single NBA game.
There have been numerous reports this season of LeBron defying his play calls and basically coaching the team himself out on the floor. James says he respects Blatt, but it is hard to believe that one of the NBA’s ten greatest ever players, a two-time champion and four-time MVP, would take an NBA rookie head coach seriously all the time.
Players look to LeBron for guidance. If he doesn’t buy in to coach’s game plan then they won’t either. The truth is that in one of the weakest Eastern Conferences in recent memory, Cleveland are still only third in the standings and a full ten games behind the Atlanta Hawks.
Much of that is down to the fact that Cleveland has been a work in progress throughout the season. A lot of their bickering comes from egos and not being on the same page while negotiating the growing pains suffered by any newly formed team.
Which brings us to this point: teams simply do not form and win a championship in their first year playing together. The 2008 Boston Celtics are an exception that proves the rule, but they never had to deal with coaching inexperience or team identity. They knew who they were on day one and were utterly unified. Cleveland took nearly 60 games to figure it out.
That being said, nobody in the East can stop Cleveland. It’s not even going to be close. Even Atlanta is going to struggle mightily against such a scoring juggernaut in Cleveland. The Cavs are a lock to make the Finals.
That’s where their championship hopes will be severely tested, because all eight playoff teams from the West have a better chance to beat Cleveland than the entire East combined.
Will raw talent, fiery scoring and the game’s best player be enough for the Cavaliers to win their first ever NBA Championship?
My brain says no. The West is too deep, and Cleveland just isn’t as unified as I would like to see in a truly elite contender.
But this is the NBA, where the game’s best player commands an abnormal amount of influence.
My heart says Cleveland absolutely can win the NBA title this season.
Both Golden State and Cleveland’s odds for winning the title is around 4-1, representing the joint-favourites. Should they meet in the Finals, that matchup would be incredibly difficult to call. But when push comes to shove, only one player from either team has won NBA titles: LeBron James.
I don’t feel good about it, but I might have to pick Cleveland to win this season’s NBA Championship.
