Cavaliers emerge as championship co-favorites in new odds

Donovan Mitchell. Bill Streicher-USA TODAY Sports

Cavaliers emerge as championship co-favorites in new playoff odds

By Eric Smithling | Last updated 2/23/23

The NBA season resumes on Thursday after the week-long All-Star break. The Ringer unveiled its "NBA Odds Machine" to mark the occasion, with a surprising team as a co-favorite to win the NBA title: the Cleveland Cavaliers.

The Cavs have a 19 percent chance of winning the championship, which ties them with the Boston Celtics.

It's less of a surprise to see Boston with such strong odds after the team reached the NBA Finals a season ago and held a 2-1 series lead over the eventual champions, the Golden State Warriors.

Per FiveThirtyEight's player-based projections, the Celtics are the favorite with a 23 percent chance of winning the title while the Cavs' chances sit at four percent.

Per the site's Elo forecast, which is a team-based forecast, Cleveland's chances rise to 10 percent while the Celtics' chances dip but they remain the favorite (18 percent).

Oddschecker also likes Boston (+325), while Cleveland (+3000) has the same odds it had during the preseason.

Advanced metrics back up the idea of Cleveland as a legitimate title contender, as do traditional metrics, such as those that highlight how good Donovan Mitchell is.

Donovan Mitchell this season:

27.3 PPG
4.9 APG
1.5 SPG
48/39/87%

Only LeBron has put up more PPG in a season as a Cavalier. pic.twitter.com/NFUFUGt3BB
— StatMuse (@statmuse) February 23, 2023

The Cavs have the league's best scoring defense (106.1 points per game) and best defensive rating (109.3). Last season, Boston and Golden State ranked first and second in defensive rating during the regular season and then reached the NBA Finals.

Cleveland (38-23, fourth in Eastern Conference) also plays at the slowest pace of any team in the league, which sets the Cavs up well for the postseason, where the game inevitably slows down and the ability to effectively execute a half-court offense is essential.

While Cleveland has given us no reason to believe it isn't legitimate, it's still a shock to the system to see a Cavaliers team without LeBron James in title contention.

But they are for real, and they don't need a machine to prove it.

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