The NBA season is nearing its conclusion as the Western and Eastern Conference finals kick off tonight, meaning fans are just a week away from determining who will make this year’s NBA Finals.
In the East, The Miami Heat host the Boston Celtics tonight whilst the Dallas Mavericks travel to San Francisco to challenge the Golden State Warriors to see who will represent the West in the impending finals.
CBS Sports HQ hosts Erik Kuselias and Sherree Burruss are joined by Bill Reiter and Kenny White to discuss both Conference finals and who they believe will make it to the NBA finals.
Starting off in the West, both Reiter and White believe the odds ring true in favour of the Warriors (-250) to beat the Mavericks. However, they are wary that Dallas, especially their star player Luka Dončić, pose a real problem and could make things interesting as they have overachieved to get into this position.
“The Warriors should win this series, but there’s a Luka Dončić factor that is really hard to figure out,” explained Reiter.
“We’ve just seen the Golden State Warriors, for lack of a better term, ‘play with their food’ in the last couple series. I ran this theory I’ve heard from other people by him (Warriors associate) that there is an arrogance factor in the Warriors that makes them not as focused as they should be early on.”
Despite being favourites to win the series, the Boston Celtics open up as an underdog to win game one against Miami tonight. This may be due to the fact that the Celtics are still recovering from a gruelling seven game series with the defending champions Milwaukee Bucks which Boston won last Sunday.
White broke down who out of Miami and Boston he favours to make the NBA finals, and he likes the continuity and brilliance of Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra.
“I’m taking a +155 and taking the Miami Heat and Erik Spoelstra because I believe he’s the difference maker in this series,” commented White.
“Also it doesn’t hurt that the Celtics are coming off that seven game series against the Milwaukee Bucks, we know Marcus Smart might not play. Other than Lowry, and he has not brought a lot to this Miami team, they’ve got plenty of weapons. This is a really good Heat team, I think the Heat win this series.”
CBS also outlined who they believe the favourites to be to win this year’s NBA Championship. The Warriors open up as the favourites (+135), followed by the Boston Celtics (+200), Miami Heat (+430), and Dallas Mavericks (+650).
