Celtics’ Recent Struggles Not Hurting Odds for NBA Championship
Although it briefly looked as though the Boston Celtics might push for home-court advantage in the first round of the 2013 playoffs, a recent slide has seemingly changed the forecast.
Despite the turn for the worse, however, the playoff-bound C?s remain one of the most intriguing NBA betting options.
The storyline is one that Boston fans have been hearing about all season long: veteran ball club shows signs of age out of the gates and fans start to lose confidence that they?ll remain among the top contenders. That being said, this is a team that not only faces adversity but thrives in it.
Now, still without injured superstar Rajon Rondo, the Celtics need to figure out what comes next and whether their resurgence in the second half of this season is for real.
Four losses last week, to a variety of opponents, have caused the Celtics to slide from the middle of the Eastern Conference playoff pack to the bottom. However, the NBA betting community hasn’t exactly taken notice.
With 30-1 odds of winning the NBA championship, the C?s sit exactly where they were prior to the skid. Such immunity in the sportsbook can mean one of two things: either that critics aren’t fazed by Boston?s recent slump, or that they were being undervalued from the beginning.
With Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce leading the charge since Rondo?s late January injury, Boston has appeared to turn back time. Unfortunately, however, minor injuries to both Pierce and Garnett have kept the two stars out of the lineup at times over the course of the past several weeks.
Those absences may not be enough to trigger a complete Celtics collapse, but it certainly doesn’t help them in grinding out the necessary wins to climb into the upper half of the Eastern Conference postseason bracket. While just last week the Celtics were within arm?s reach of the Atlantic Division title and No. 3 seed, they’ve now fallen to No. 7.
Hope remains for Boston — as evidenced by their odds in the sportsbook — but the unexpected success that the franchise enjoyed this winter may not translate well into the spring. Keep a close eye on this veteran ball club as they look to battle back from adversity yet again.
