The San Antonio Spurs host the Boston Celtics on Tuesday night in a potential NBA Finals preview. They are each the No. 2 seed in their respective conference. San Antonio has been a better team this season, but Boston was playing without Jayson Tatum until last week, and he has looked better than anyone could’ve imagined. It begs the question: With Tatum back, which of these two teams has a better chance of winning the Finals?
Right now the teams have similar title odds. FanDuel has the Spurs at +600 to win the NBA Finals, the second-best mark in the league behind the reigning champion Thunder. The Celtics, at +650, have the third-best odds.
What does our CBS Sports NBA staff think? We polled our group ahead of Tuesday’s showdown.
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Botkin: The fact that we’re mostly going to say the Celtics, and that we’re all going to have similar reasoning for saying the Celtics, is the more important conversation to have. Can we PLEASE ditch the conferences and go to a playoff format that just takes the top 16 NBA teams and puts them in a bracket? Enough with the “it’s cyclical” stuff. It’s not. This goes back to LeBron James making eight straight Finals out of the East. That never would’ve happened in the West. The imbalance has been as consistent as it has been extreme for far too long. Yet again it’s the same story this season. So yes, the Celtics are the better bet to win the Finals. Not because they’re better than the Spurs (they might be, but it’s a toss-up and if all things were equal our answers to this question would be roughly split 50/50 as well), but because they are in the East. That’s the boring answer. But it’s the truth.
Gonzalez: The question is set up to have everyone land on the Celtics because they ostensibly have the easier path coming out of the East. I think they’re the favorites to win the conference, but I don’t know that they’re on a glide path to the Finals, either. I wouldn’t expect the Pistons, Knicks and Cavs to step aside and let the Celtics take it with minimal effort.
The more interesting question — which I’m choosing to answer instead — is who you’d pick if both teams advance and the Spurs face the Celtics in the Finals. In that scenario, I’ll take San Antonio. The Spurs have the best player on either team and I’m not sure it’s particularly close. No amount of Joe Mazzulla maneuvering can solve for the problems Victor Wembanyama presents.
Herbert: I’m going with the Celtics. I’m not positive that I’d pick them in a hypothetical series against the Spurs, but I think they’ll have a less treacherous path to the Finals. Boston has been deep, balanced and extremely impressive all season, and now that Jayson Tatum is back, it isn’t hard to envision this team going all the way. San Antonio is a legitimate contender, too, but Oklahoma City and Denver are more imposing than anybody in the East.
Kalland: Boston’s path to the Finals is a bit easier by virtue of being in the East, where all of the other top contenders are either unproven (Detroit) or have a ton of playoff scar tissue (New York and Cleveland). On top of that, the Celtics have an awful lot more playoff experience than San Antonio. Making a deep playoff run has become a habit for Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum during their time in Boston, while San Antonio is going to be experiencing it all for the first time. History tells us that matters, and I think the Celtics’ experience navigating multiple seven-game series lends them a slight edge in the likelihood that they end up in the Finals.
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Maloney: This time a week ago, I would have picked the Spurs, but I can’t believe how good Jayson Tatum looks. He’s not all the way back, of course, but two games in he’s way closer to his usual self than I ever thought he would be this season, and still has another month to play himself into a rhythm before the playoffs. Getting this version of Tatum completely changes the Celtics’ prospects as an actual contender.
But as everyone else has mentioned, the biggest reason to pick the Celtics is the Thunder’s existence. To be honest, I’m not sure there’s really much difference in the initial path for either team. If the season ended today, and assuming all the higher seeds advanced, the Celtics would play the Heat in the first round and Knicks in the second round, while the Spurs would play the Suns in the first round and the Timberwolves in the second round. That’s pretty comparable. Eventually, though, the Spurs would have to get through the defending champs, and there’s no one in the East on the Thunder’s level.
