NBA
2024 NBA Finals MVP odds and predictions: Who is the favorite ahead of game 5?
Joe Mazzulla’s team are one win away from the title. The Cs lost 18 regular season games and three in the postseason. Expectation is sky high for Game 5 at TD Garden on Monday.
The 2024 NBA Finals goes to Game 5 after the Mavericks stunned Joe Mazzulla’s Celtics by winning Game 4 by a 38-point margin. Whether Doncic and Co can repeat the feat when the two teams meet at TD Garden on Monday is another matter. The Cs lost just 18 regular season games in 2023-24 and during the current playoffs, they have lost just three games - losing Game 2 to the Heat in the first round, Game 2 to the Cavs in the semifinals and then Friday’s game against Dallas.
Luka Doncic (29) and Kyrie Irving (21) contributed a combined 50 points for the Mavs at American Airlines Center but the Celtics will spend this weekend studying where they went wrong and as Jayson Tatum explained, “Obviously we’re going to watch film and see a lot of things that we need to clean up and do better,” adding that the Cs will be spurred on by a partisan home crowd on Monday: I think it’s going to be as loud as it’s ever been in my seven years of being a Celtic”.
The Celtics’ betting odds and spread
Almost everything is tipped in Boston’s favor heading into Game 5 - home court advantage, a relatively fully fit roster (only Kristaps Porzingis is questionable) and they need just one win to wrap up the series and be crowned champions. It’s more a question when rather than if they do it - bouncing back from 3-0 in an NBA Finals is an almost impossible task, as the history books show.
Boston’s last title was in 2008 while Dallas logged their first and only championship in 2011. The Celtics started the postseason among the favorites and they remain the bookmakers’ choice to win a potentially decisive Game 5 and take the series to secure a record 18th title.
The Boston Celtics are the odds-on favorites at -290 and -7 on the spread to win Monday’s game at TD Garden while the Mavs’ odds stands at +235 with +7 on the spread. So far this season, the Celtics have registered a 43-36-4 record against the spread. Dallas have entered each of their four postseason series as the underdogs, having eliminated the Los Angeles Clippers, No. 1-seeded Oklahoma City Thunder, and the Minnesota Timberwolves on their way to the final.