(Photo by Jeenah Moon/Getty Images)
There are eight teams remaining right now in the NBA playoffs, and of those teams, the Boston Celtics remain the favorite to win the world championship.
They have been down this road before, and they may have a better chance of winning it all than ever before now that the Miami Heat are out of the playoffs and the defending champion Denver Nuggets are down 0-2.
Per NBACentral, Jayson Tatum, the Celtics’ best player, has the highest betting odds to walk away with the NBA Finals MVP award.
Jayson Tatum is the favorite to win 2024 Finals MVP, per @BovadaOfficial
Jayson Tatum: +150
Anthony Edwards: +300
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander: +800
Jalen Brunson: +1000
Luka Doncic: +1100
Jaylen Brown: +1200
Nikola Jokic: +1200
Karl-Anthony Towns: +3000
Derrick… pic.twitter.com/hGGBhZVg7A
— NBACentral (@TheDunkCentral) May 7, 2024
Tatum had another excellent regular season, averaging 26.9 points and a career-high 4.9 assists a game while shooting 47.1 percent from the field and 37.6 percent from 3-point range.
His Celtics won 64 games, which gave them the best record in the NBA, and they breezed past a Heat team that was without Jimmy Butler in the first round of the playoffs.
But since they have reached the Eastern Conference Finals five times in the last seven seasons, expectations run a little higher than merely having the best regular-season record.
Boston lost in the NBA Finals two seasons ago to the Golden State Warriors after forging a 2-1 series lead, and Tatum was the man who many blamed.
In that series, he shot just 36.7 percent, and he shot above 43 percent in just one of the six games played.
If the Celtics are to win their 18th world title this year, Tatum will need to rise to the occasion in the biggest games of the postseason, and if he doesn’t, there will be more talk that perhaps he isn’t a true franchise player.
But if he does, he could start to take his place alongside team legends such as Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett, John Havlicek, and even Larry Bird.
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