Tag: Atlanta Hawks

NBA Playoffs Futures Betting: A Final Look at the Eastern Conference NBA Championship Race

Posted on by Online Betting Pro

 

With ten days to go in the NBA regular season, we present a final analysis of contenders and pretenders heading into the NBA Playoffs. Today, we look at the Eastern Conference. Who will you bank on to win?

March 26, 2015

 

This has been an NBA regular season for the ages, and we’ve hardly had a moment to catch our breath. With ten days remaining in the regular season, the NBA Championship race remains highly unpredictable in a way that we haven’t seen in decades of professional basketball.

Today, in our final look at NBA Futures betting for the NBA Championship, we take a look at this year’s Eastern Conference contenders as we gear up for a historically competitive NBA playoffs.

 

The Atlanta Hawks:

The Atlanta Hawks are the undisputed Cinderella of the 2015 NBA regular season. They will finish the regular season with the Eastern Conference top record, setting a franchise record for wins along the way. The Hawks have been around since 1949 when they debuted as the Tri-Cities Blackhawks, and this year’s squad has won more games than any since. They are arguably the finest squad in Hawks history.

They play an efficient, unselfish, team-first brand of basketball modelled on ball movement and the San Antonio Spurs’ championship formula. They can defend, they can score, they can shoot and they play for each other. The Atlanta Hawks are really good.

However, the discussion here concerns whether they are good enough to win the NBA Championship. Basketball purists LOVE these Hawks for good reason. In an era where the individual NBA superstar is celebrated to a ludicrous degree, Atlanta is winning with the opposite formula. They have no superstar players. Their strength comes from the collective being stronger than the sum of its individual parts. They play pure, team basketball without relying on a single star.

That’s why this Atlanta team is the darling of the NBA season. But, that is also why the Atlanta Hawks are not going to win the NBA Championship this season.

If NBA history has taught us one thing, it’s that teams without an established superstar do not win NBA titles. Going back 30 years, only the 2004 Detroit Pistons won the NBA Championship without a superstar player. Previous to that, you’d have to go back to the 1979 Seattle Supersonics to find the next team that won without an elite superstar.

That is a whole lot of history the Atlanta Hawks are up against.

The NBA Playoffs are a different animal to the regular season. Defenses tighten up and in a seven-game series, teams play each other 4-7 times in ten days. This means that teams have ample opportunity to make adjustments from game to game.

That’s where the superstar closer comes in to earn the big bucks. During playoff games, all offenses have difficult stretches when everything grinds to halt. That’s when having a great individual player to create scoring from nothing is beyond crucial to success. Atlanta has exactly zero star players who can carry the scoring load. In the NBA Playoffs, that is an alarming situation to be in.

Odds Picture: The Hawks have hovered at 7-1 odds (fourth favourites) for some time now, and that is not going to change. It is not exactly enticing because while Atlanta is very good, they should in reality be closer to 12-1 odds. But because they play in the woeful East, their odds take a beating.

Final Verdict: We love Atlanta and hope that they can shock the world. But history tells us that they’re one great player short. If you’re going to take a punt on a dark horse, we suggest picking one from the deep, deep West, where the odds are juicy all over… (stay tuned to this space for the Western Conference Playoff Preview next week)

 

The Cleveland Cavaliers:

They are hitting top gear, they have the best player in the league by far, they are easily the most dangerous team in the NBA right now and they are the outright favourite to win the NBA Championship. Whether they can beat whoever comes out of the West is another question, but Cleveland’s path to reach the Finals is a lock. Just book it now, the Cavs are making the Finals.

Of the contending teams, Cleveland is the one squad that hasn’t even seen its best side yet. And that is scary, because they have been the best team in the league since the February All-Star break.

It hasn’t been easy, and many questions about chemistry remain. Their new superstar forward, Kevin Love, has had well documented troubles fitting in with LeBron James on and off the court. Their rookie head coach, David Blatt, has battled scrutiny and doubt all season not just from the media, but from his own team. It’s an open secret that LeBron James coaches that team and frequently ignores his coach’s play calls from the sideline.

And yet, none of this has stopped Cleveland from becoming a true scoring juggernaut and the most dangerous team in the NBA heading into the playoffs.

Such is the luxury of having the world’s best player, LeBron James, on your squad. If they ever figure out how to use Kevin Love as he was intended to be used, there will be no stopping Cleveland. There may be no stopping them regardless.

Odds Picture: Cleveland is the bookies favourite to win it all at 2.5/1 odds. It’s actually a good bet, because their easy path to the Finals in the woeful East will be a massive advantage over their Finals opponents. Whoever comes through from the West will have endured a bloodbath to get to the same point as Cleveland.

Final Verdict: Mark it down and set it in stone: Cleveland will be in the Finals. Whether they beat the West’s finest is the real question. But whoever they play, Cleveland will give them all they can handle.

 

The Chicago Bulls:

I hate writing about the Chicago Bulls because you cannot discuss this team for more than ten seconds before somebody brings up Derrick Rose’s constantly broken knees. And who can blame them for doing so? Derrick Rose’s knees are always broken.

The only good thing that comes with his latest injury? At least we know not to waste our money betting on a Bulls championship. It’s not going to happen.

From April 2012 till now, Rose has torn his knees up three times in major injuries. Every positive move has been met with a setback twice as potent. At the end of February this year, he re-tore a meniscus in his knee and underwent surgery again. We have ten games to go until playoff time and instead of finalizing their playoff push, we are still reading about how the former MVP swears he’ll be ready for the postseason.

The only problem is, nobody can believe him anymore. How could we at this point? How is it possible to trust Derrick Rose’s knees when three years of evidence points to a player that may well end up as one of the NBA’s all-time cautionary tales?

Sadly, Derrick Rose is no longer in charge of his body. That means that no matter how well-intentioned he is in what he says or does, the truth is that his body has betrayed him for good.

2012 Derrick Rose is never coming back, and that is very, very sad.

The Bulls are used to playing without Rose, and they have the NBA’s most relentlessly demanding coach. They know how to play at a high level without Rose, but this drive has taken its toll. Key players such as Joakim Noah and Jimmy Butler are all carrying chronic injuries into the playoffs. And with such a cloud of uncertainty hanging over the team, the Bulls are looking at a familiar scene: a spirited underdog performance in the playoffs that is ultimately not enough to win it all.

Odds Picture: The Bulls chances are dropping, and rightfully so. Currently, they stand anywhere from 12-1 odds up to 18-1 odds depending on the sportsbook. Even such a fat potential payout is not enough to entice a punt. Save your money for a real dark horse from the West.

Final Verdict: In short, the Chicago Bulls are done without a healthy Derrick Rose. They only had a puncher’s chance to win even with him in uniform. But trying to rush him back for the playoffs on a set of knees that break twice a year? The Chicago Bulls are not winning anything this year.

 

(Stay tuned for the Western Conference Playoff Preview next week!)

 

NBA Futures Betting: Are the Atlanta Hawks For Real? A Look at their Odds and their Case for the Unlikeliest of NBA Titles

Posted on by Online Betting Pro

February 24, 2015

 

At the time of this writing, the Atlanta Hawks lead the NBA Eastern Conference standings with a 44-12 record. To put these Hawks into context: they are sitting on a .786 winning percentage with two-thirds of the season gone. That’s on pace for the 20th most winningest season in NBA history.

That’s a better record than Larry Bird’s first Boston Celtics championship season in ’81. Or the dominant ’89 champion Detroit Pistons. Or the ’98 championship Chicago Bulls, led by some guy named Michael Jordan. Or dozens of other championship teams in NBA history.

The Atlanta Hawks are baffling because a team of overlooked consolation prizes almost never come together to challenge for NBA titles. They have zero elite players and have remained largely unchanged for two seasons. Suddenly, they’re winning more games than Larry Bird.

You’d have to go back to the 2004 Detroit Pistons to find a comparable team of overachievers that came out of nowhere to dominate. That Pistons team further shocked the world by winning the NBA Championship, but that is a historical anomaly.

In the past 30 years, only the 2004 Detroit Pistons can be described as a complete underdog champion. Sure, a few other teams in that period have punched above their weight to claim a title. But these teams had at least a shot at winning. Nobody gave the ’04 Pistons the slightest chance in hell to win it all.

Teams without an elite great player do not win NBA titles. But the 2004 Detroit Pistons somehow managed to win despite not having one. The previous championship squad without an elite superstar was the 1979 Seattle Supersonics.

Whoever bet on that Pistons team to win must have made an obscene amount of money and commanded twice as much in bragging rights. This year’s Atlanta Hawks is the first team to come along since then that reminds us of those Pistons, in terms of how unlikely their championship bid seems regardless of what the standings say.

Can the Atlanta Hawks do the same and shock the world? Let’s have a look at the case for and against Atlanta as we compare them to the 2004 Detroit Pistons.

 

The Case for Atlanta:

 

The very nature of this NBA season itself is Atlanta’s best case. We are enjoying a historically open season where a normally predictable landscape has been made highly unpredictable. Usually, an NBA season features two or maybe three elite contenders and one of them invariably wins. Teams ranked 4-10 almost never win.

This year, we have no truly elite teams. Instead, we have an incredibly deep field of 8-10 credible contenders. This almost never happens in the NBA and it is a partial explanation for Atlanta’s excellent season thus far. There are so many teams in turmoil or development (especially in the East) that teams like Atlanta can exploit them with its stability and unselfishness.

Those ’04 Pistons were relentlessly unselfish, and it allowed them to play a slow-down brand of suffocating basketball with players that knew exactly what their roles were. They were the epitome of “stronger than the sum of its parts.”

Atlanta has that same unselfishness and stability. Their head coach, Mike Budenholzer, spent 18 years as an assistant for legendary Spurs coach, Gregg Popovich, before landing in Atlanta last year. That’s a PHD in winning and unselfish basketball, taught by one of the five greatest coaches in NBA history. Budenholzer learned well from Popovich, and the Hawks (nicknamed “Spurs East” in some media circles) now exhibit the same unselfish team-first principles that helped to make the Spurs a dynasty.

In a Conference where powerhouses such as Cleveland and Chicago are still finalizing their team structure, Atlanta is already the finished product. Great, team basketball can hide many shortcomings, and this Atlanta team learned from the best.

 

The Case Against Atlanta:

 

This is going to be a far longer list than the case for the Hawks winning, but that’s the whole point! Nobody saw the ’04 Pistons coming, even though their “cons” list must have rivalled the one I’m about to write for the Hawks.

First of all, we have to identify a few simple facts: the 2004 Pistons were coached by the all-time great Larry Brown, while the promising Budenholzer is still finding his way.

Also, the 2004 Detroit Pistons were a historically dominant defensive team. They were an absolute monster to score against. Detroit basically sucked the life out of their opponents with a defense that was hard to watch even for purist basketball nerds.

But it worked! Larry Brown took his team’s one elite skill and turned it into an all-time defensive brick wall. They may have lacked the firepower, but they rode a legendary lockdown defense all the way to the top.

Atlanta has a very good defense, currently ranked third in the league in points-per-game allowed and opponent’s field goal percentage. However, they are not the ’04 Pistons defensively, mainly because, well, nobody is.

That Detroit front line was an all-time nightmare to play against. Rasheed Wallace was one of the finest post defenders around. Tayshaun Prince was long, fast and a relentless lockdown defender who could guard four positions at an elite level. And big Ben Wallace, a four-time NBA Defensive Player of the Year, was a once-a-generation defensive force.

With all due respect to Al Horford, Paul Millsap and whoever is starting next to them, Atlanta is not in the same league as 2004 Detroit.

You can’t win a title without a good-to-great defense, which Atlanta has. But it’s not an all-time dominant defense, which means they won’t ride it all the way to a title like Detroit did. Even those Pistons would secretly admit they were lucky to win it all, because they, like the Hawks, were limited by their lack of an elite superstar.

You need one of those to win in the NBA, and the Hawks do not have anything resembling a star closer. In the tensest moments of playoff basketball, sometimes you just cannot score against iron-clad defenses regardless of how good your team is playing. That’s when you need a dominant player who can create opportunities from nothing.

Atlanta doesn’t have that closer. They will meet playoff defenses and will struggle to score against them in key possessions. The best player matters in a playoff series, and these Hawks might not have a single series in which they have the best player on their side.

Finally, let’s look at the odds picture to see if that makes a punt worthwhile.

Currently in late February, a futures bet for an Atlanta Hawks championship stands at a lukewarm 7-1, which means a $100 bet would get you $700. This makes them the fourth favourites to win it all, and only Golden State (4-1), Cleveland (4-1) and defending champion San Antonio (6-1) are ranked above them. For a team as unlikely to win as Atlanta, 7-1 odds are not exactly enticing.

In context, current Western powers such as the OKC Thunder (10-1), Memphis Grizzlies (12-1), Houston Rockets (17-1) and the insanely underrated Portland Trailblazers (30-1!!!) all have far more enticing payouts (and arguably, better teams).

Atlanta is rated this highly because they play in the terrible East where only two other teams are contenders (Cavs and Bulls). The Eastern path to the Finals is like a beach holiday compared to the bloodbath we can expect in the West, where all eight playoff teams have a shot at winning.

So, sure, Atlanta has a better chance at getting to the Finals than the Western teams mentioned above, but guess what? Even if they get there, they still have to actually play one of those teams. That’s when Hawks supporters become quiet again.

I’d have a punt on Atlanta at a minimum of 12-1 odds, but at 7-1 it doesn’t look good at all. Portland, at a ridiculously mouthwatering 30-1 odds, is arguably a better team than Atlanta. The Blazers are the team I’d bet on purely for the ludicrously generous payout.

But Atlanta at 7-1 odds just doesn’t do enough to make me forget how flawed they are as a contender. They are tearing up the regular season but the playoffs are a different animal. At 7-1 odds, it’s not worth betting on Atlanta and what may well be an unproven playoff team who overachieved at the wrong time in the NBA season.