As the second half — well, final third — of the NBA season gets back underway tomorrow night with a matchup between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Charlotte Hornets, the playoff race is in full swing. The East has established itself as having three true contenders.
Today, I’ll take you through the current odds to win the Eastern Conference on DraftKings Sportsbook, and earlier today, my colleague Alex Hunter did the same for the West.
NBA Eastern Conference Winner Odds
Unsurprisingly, the defending champion Boston Celtics have the shortest odds to win the East; until someone takes them down, they should be considered the favorite to win the title. Sure, Boston hasn’t been great in recent weeks — it went just 10-6 in January with the league’s seventh-best net rating — but anybody in the East is going to be hard-pressed to beat Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown, Jrue Holiday, Derrick White, and Kristaps Porzingis in a playoff series, especially with Payton Pritchard looking likely to win the NBA’s Sixth Man of the Year award.
That said, at -105 odds, I can’t back Boston. The Celtics are virtually locked into the 2-3 matchup, 5.5 games behind the Cleveland Cavaliers for first and eight games ahead of the Indiana Pacers for fourth, so it’s almost a guarantee that the 2-3 matchup is going to be between them and the New York Knicks. After buoying its roster massively over the summer with blockbuster trades for forward Mikal Bridges and center Karl-Anthony Towns, New York is going to be an incredibly difficult out, and while Boston has won both games between the two teams comfortably, I’d expect that series to go at least six games. If the Celtics do get by the Knicks, the Cavaliers will probably have a rest advantage entering the Eastern Conference Finals. Plus, Brown has regressed on both sides of the ball this season and Horford and Holiday have both shown signs of their age, with their efficiency especially slipping. I’m always concerned about Kristaps Porzingis’ propensity to get injured.
Instead, Cleveland at +250 is a far better bet. New acquisition De’Andre Hunter might not be the ideal Tatum stopper, but the ideal Tatum stopper might not exist. The Cavaliers addressed their one weakness at the trade deadline, and they still have important pieces coming off the bench, including Max Strus, Ty Jerome, and sharpshooter Sam Merrill. Donovan Mitchell may not be a top-ten player in the league in the regular season, but he’s a proven playoff performer, having averaged 28.1 points per game across 54 career playoff games, the seventh-highest average in NBA history. 23-year-old Evan Mobley is improving virtually every single game, and Darius Garland is just one made field goal and six made free throws shy of a 50-40-90 season. The fact that Cleveland is on pace for the 16th-best regular season record in NBA history isn’t a fluke; the team is really, really good. Mobley and Jarrett Allen should be able to slow down Tatum enough if he drives, and Mitchell and Garland should be quick and athletic enough to take advantage of Boston’s aging back-court.
I don’t really like any of the long shots, but Milwaukee’s +1200 odds are pretty friendly simply because of Giannis Antetokounmpo. If standings hold, the Bucks would currently be projected to face Indiana in the first round, and while the Pacers shouldn’t be slept on — they did make the Eastern Conference Finals last season, after all — top-end talent wins in the playoffs. Myles Turner is a solid rim protector and Pascal Siakam was an All-Star for good reason, but Indiana simply doesn’t have anything similar to the Kawhi Leonard-Marc Gasol or Jimmy Butler-Bam Adebayo pairings that have slowed down Antetokounmpo in the past. He’s also averaging 33.5 points, 15 rebounds, and six assists in two games against Cleveland this season, and theoretically, Milwaukee isn’t a great matchup for the Cavaliers. Damian Lillard, AJ Green, and Gary Trent Jr. provide enough shooting to drag Mobley away from the basket on defense — where he’s slightly less effective — and going from Khris Middleton to Kyle Kuzma adds size on the wings. The winner of the Boston-New York series will likely be tired by the Eastern Conference Finals, and Antetokounmpo has had three big games against the Celtics already this season.
