They certainly know how to get our attention. Day One on the NBA betting circuit started Tuesday with the Boston Celtics beating the Cleveland Cavaliers 95-89 and cashing in as 5-point road dogs. That’s one hell of an opening act.
These same two teams could easily meet in the Eastern Conference Finals. But it’s a long road between now and April, and there’s at least one other team in the East with legitimate hopes of making it to the NBA Finals – where they would inevitably lose to the Los Angeles Lakers.
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Two-peat
That’s what the NBA futures are predicting as we tip off the 2009-10 season. The defending champion Lakers are 2-1 favorites to win another title, ahead of Cleveland at 10-3 and Boston at 4-1. Lingering in the shadows are the San Antonio Spurs (four titles in the past 11 seasons) at 15-2, and the Orlando Magic (the defending Eastern champions) at 8-1. Everyone else has a lot of catching up to do.
This is not a league of surprises. It’s going to be incredibly difficult for anyone outside this elite quintet to make it to the championship round. Consider the betting odds at the open for the Eastern title:
Cleveland 5-4
Boston 2-1
Orlando 3-1
That already adds up to a shade over 100 percent. The concentration of power is even more evident in the West, where the Lakers are overwhelming 2-3 favorites to repeat, followed by the Spurs at 3-1. There’s a considerable gap in talent between those two (winners of eight of the last 11 NBA titles) and the Denver Nuggets at 7-1.
The Rich Get Richer
The common thread with all five of the elite teams is their aggressive re-tooling during the offseason. The Lakers, not satisfied to stand pat in this competitive market, replaced Trevor Ariza with Ron Artest at small forward. Artest can be a wayward shooter at times, as he showed Tuesday night by going 3-for-10 against the Los Angeles Clippers. But Artest was also a team high plus-14 in a 99-92 victory. The Clippers took advantage of Pau Gasol’s absence (hamstring) to cover as 12-point dogs.
The biggest offseason move, literally, was 7-foot-1 and 325-pound Shaquille O’Neal joining LeBron James in Cleveland. The pairing worked, at least when Shaq was on the floor. He was a plus-2 with 10 points and 10 rebounds in 29 minutes of work against the Celtics. Fellow newcomer Anthony Parker was a plus-3 as the starting shooting guard, hitting two of three from long range and playing strong defense. But Cleveland’s subs weren’t as good as Boston’s. The added bench strength of Rasheed Wallace (plus-10), Marquis Daniels (plus-11) and even Shelden Williams (plus-7) made the difference in this matchup.
Thumbs Down
Williams finds himself with a chance to reboot his NBA career after kicking around with three different teams in his first three years since coming out of Duke. The defensive-minded power forward will get his minutes now that Glen
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