What The Nba Finals Online
- The Raptors are NBA champions for the first time in franchise history. Keep it here for all the reaction, analysis, news and more after a thrilling six-game series.
- The Bill Russell NBA Finals Most Valuable Player Award (formerly known as the NBA Finals Most Valuable Player Award) is an annual National Basketball Association (NBA) award given since the 1969 NBA Finals. The award is decided by a panel of eleven media members, who cast votes after the conclusion of the Finals.
- NBA Full Game Replay. NBAHD.com is a free website to watch NBA Replay all Games Today.We provides multiple links with HD quality, Fast Streams and FREE. We offer the best all NBA games, Preseason, Regular Season,NBA Playoffs,NBA Finals games replay in HD without subscription. Easy watch any games competition online from your mobile, tablet, Mac or PC.
- 2019-20 Blogtable Bubble Wrap: Will the Lakers' path to The Finals in 2021 be easier or harder? Our scribes assess L.A.' S chances of winning back-to-back NBA titles.
The 2020-21 NBA season is well underway after tipping off the campaign on Dec. 22. There are a little over two months remaining in the regular season, with the playoffs starting in May and the Finals wrapping up in July. Here we look at live NBA Finals odds with the Lakers the favorites to win it all again.
The 2020 NBA playoffs was the postseason tournament of the National Basketball Association's 2019–20 season.The playoffs were originally scheduled to begin on April 18. However, the league suspended the season on March 11, 2020, hours after COVID-19 was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization and after some players tested positive for the vir.
The Brooklyn Nets were neck-and-neck with the Milwaukee Bucks to win the East at most books early in the season and were around +600 to win the title. Immediately following the trade for James Harden, however, the Nets championship odds improved to +270 at FanDuel Sportsbook. Brooklyn is now +300 to win it all, with the second lowest odds – behind the favorite LA Lakers at +280.
2021 NBA title odds
2021 NBA Futures Report (March 9)
NBA 2021 Championship Favorites
Los Angeles Lakers: The defending champs have looked vulnerable throughout the regular season and have struggled lately with Anthony Davis (Achilles) on the shelf. Still, the LeBron James-led Lakers are 13-5 on the road and 17-8 against WCF teams with the potential to hit another gear once Davis is healthy.
Brooklyn Nets: James Harden was the MVP of the league over the last three weeks before the All-Star Break. With Harden playing the best ball of his career, the Nets were able to win 10 of their last 11 while Kevin Durant (hamstring) watched in street clothes. This team will be tough to beat if they can continue to improve defensively.
Los Angeles Clippers: The Clippers are 14-3 against losing teams, but 10-11 against winning teams and 7-11 with a league-worst -26.4 net rating in the final five minutes of games within 5 points. They’re completely dependent on Kawhi Leonard to create crunch-time offense.
Milwaukee Bucks: After posting the best regular season numbers in history prior to the shutdown last March, the Bucks have struggled to regain momentum. They’re 8-9 on the road and 7-9 against teams with winning records this year, but could find some cohesion on the other side of the break now that Jrue Holiday is back with the team.
Utah Jazz: With a league-best +8.8 point differential, along with the best 3-point percentage, and best rebounding rate in the NBA, the Jazz are similar to the 2019-2020 Bucks in terms of their regular season dominance. Will that carry over into the playoffs?
Philadelphia 76ers: Joel Embiid is the primary challenger to Harden in our latest MVP rankings and the Sixers are the biggest threat to the Nets in the East. Brooklyn will have no answers for Embiid now that Jarrett Allen has been shipped out of town, but Ben Simmons (+225) – a leading candidate for Defensive Player of the Year – should be able to slow down Harden or Durant.
The Contenders
Boston Celtics: The Celtics got hot before the break with Kemba Walker (knee) showing signs of life and they should get Marcus Smart (calf) back in the lineup soon. It may take some time for those guards to gel with young superstars Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum, but this team is just a savvy trade away from becoming a legit title contender.
Denver Nuggets: The Nuggets also caught fire before the break with the top offensive rating in the NBA during a four-game win streak. Nikola Jokic leads the league in PER and is the favorite to win MVP according to stats and projections compiled by Basketball-Reference.com.
Phoenix Suns: There is no reason not to back this Suns team now that Chris Paul has taken over and exerted his competitive control over a talented young roster. They won 11 of 13 with a league-best 14.2 net rating before the break and posted a 25.9 net rating in clutch time with wins over the Bucks, 76ers, and Lakers in that span.
Miami Heat: Jimmy Butler is back and so is Miami’s more subtle leader, Goran Dragic (foot). Bam Adebayo continues to showcase his exponential growth on both ends of the floor, but the real star of the Heat might be head coach Erik Spoelstra.
Dallas Mavericks: The Mavericks came out of a 10-day layoff due to a climate disaster with renewed focus on the defensive end and won five of their last six games heading into the break, including the only victory over Brooklyn since Feb. 9.
Toronto Raptors: Before a COVID outbreak cost them a few games by forcing three starters and four coaches to quarantine, the Raptors were heating up with an elite defensive rating and convincing wins over the Bucks and Sixers.
Portland Trail Blazers: Even without Jusuf Nurkic, Zach Collins, and C.J. McCollum, the Blazers are 5-2 with an absurd 138.7 offensive rating over their last seven close games. Damian Lillard leads the NBA in fourth quarter scoring and can carry his team until those other key players return.
How the 2021 NBA Playoffs will work
The 2020-21 NBA regular season will last 72 games with the top six teams in each conference earning an automatic playoff berth. Teams that finish in the 7-10 spots in each conference will be eligible for a play-in tournament (May 18-21) as long as they’re within four games in the final standings.
The 9th seed in each conference will have a chance to play their way into the playoffs by beating the 8th seed twice in a row. The 8th seed would have to win one of those games to advance. The scenario is the same for the 10th seed and 7th seed in each conference if the 10th seed qualifies.
The NBA still plans to run best-of-seven series formats for the quarterfinal, semifinal and finals in both the Eastern and Western Conference. Those rounds will take place from May 22 to July 6, with the NBA Finals scheduled from July 8 to 22, just one day before the 2021 Summer Olympics are scheduled to open in Japan.
NBA Finals odds: Futures betting 101
NBA futures bets function like futures bets in other sports. They’re typically based on an end-of-season outcome. Futures bets are usually made available on both the team and player level.
Prior to the start of a season, team-level futures could include a wager on the minimum number of wins a team will capture in that season or whether a team will win its division or conference.
Player-level futures include whether a player will win the MVP, Rookie of the Year or Sixth Man of the Year awards, for example. Other player-level futures are based on whether a player will reach certain benchmarks in common statistical categories such as points, 3-point shots, rebounds or assists for the season.
Where do I find futures bets in an online sportsbook?
In an online sportsbook, available futures wagers are typically found under their own tab as a subcategory of wagers available for a particular sport. Like the odds for other bet types, futures bets are typically labeled with a number that has a “plus” or “minus” sign next to it.
In the case of futures bets, a “minus” sign would be placed next to a team or player that has a higher probability of reaching the statistical goal. Teams or players with a “plus” sign are considered by oddsmakers to have a lesser chance of reaching that goal. The higher the number next to the plus sign signifies the lower the probability the team or player achieves it.
For example, the LA Lakers enter the 2020-21 season as the favorites to win it all as they have +270 odds. That signifies that a bettor would have to wager $100 to win $270 if the Lakers do indeed take it again.
It’s also important to note that futures odds for both players and teams can certainly fluctuate throughout the course of a season.
Best NBA betting sites
Common questions regarding wagering on the NBA Finals
Where can I bet on the NBA Finals in the US?
Bettors can currently bet on the NBA Finals in the US at a regulated sportsbook in one of the following states:
Who is the favorite to win the NBA Championship in 2021?
The Lakers were initially installed as favorites to repeat, with odds of +360 at FanDuel Sportsbook. Those odds lowered to +270 just prior to the start of the season due to LA’s strong off-season. LA is now +280 to win it all at FD.
When does the 2021 NBA season start?
The 2020-21 NBA season started on Dec. 22, 2020.
Who Won The Nba Finals
When do the NBA Finals start?
The 2021 NBA playoffs will start on May 22, 2021 and the NBA Finals are expected to begin in mid-July. Prior to the pandemic, the NBA had traditionally held its championship round in early June.
Where can I get NBA betting tips?
Start with our own 6-part NBA betting series right here:
PlayPicks.com is also a valuable resource for bettors of all levels. Throughout the NBA season, PlayPicks.com will feature articles with a sports betting breakdown of select games, including a suggested lean or pick on the game’s point spread, moneyline and/or the projected total. Additionally, new bettors can find rewarding offers and bonuses exclusive to PlayPicks.com readers that are also first-time depositors.
The Toronto Raptors are NBA champions for the first time in franchise history, dethroning the Golden State Warriors and spoiling their run at three straight titles.
Keep it here for all the reaction, analysis, news and more after a thrilling six-game series.
Toronto Raptors defeat Golden State Warriors, 4-2
Raptors top Warriors for 1st title Kawhi wins MVP
What a Time to Be Alive: Reaction to Toronto's title
Klay's injury will force the Warriors to rethink next season
Thompson's injury and return sends Twitter into a frenzy
End of an era: Oakland sends Warriors off to San Francisco
Durant undergoes surgery for ruptured Achilles
NBA: Gasol was fouled in last minute of Game 5
NBA players react to Kevin Durant injury
Five moments that helped pave Toronto's road to the NBA Finals
Marc Gasol transformed from dinosaur to Raptor
Cousins overcame urge to quit after quad injury
Toronto's best pitch to keep Kawhi
The Warriors-Raptors crazy connections
Decimated Warriors already on to 'unfinished business'
This season has been a war of attrition and attention for the Warriors. At times, the team seemed to be dragging itself along -- too talented and proud to surrender, but too tired and injured to mount the kind of fight it has become known for.
Five straight years of breathing the same air with the same group of human beings can wear on the most gentle soul. Five years of doing that under the spotlight that accompanies being the best team in the NBA is when pipes start bursting.
But the way things finally ended, with Durant and Thompson going down with catastrophic injuries that will keep each of them out a significant portion of next year, makes every other issue around the Warriors feel less important.
Read Ramona Shelburne on the Warriors' future
Toronto's best case to keep Kawhi
For NBA teams, trafficking in superstars is a two-part process -- acquisition, then retention -- and it's that latter stage that presents the greatest challenge. Any front office with the requisite assets can trade for a superstar, but only one skilled at the art of persuasion can keep him. Upon winning the NBA championship Thursday night, the Raptors will soon shift their attention to the retention project they've been planning for nearly a year -- signing Leonard to a long-term contract in free agency to remain in Toronto.
How do you sell someone not easily sold? How do you sculpt a pitch about external factors when the target of that pitch is someone so internally focused? What can you really offer that other leading NBA organizations can't? How can the Raptors compensate for their geographic disadvantage to a team like the LA Clippers in recruiting a Southern Californian whose preference for temperate climes is well known?
Read Kevin Arnovitz on the Raptors' next step
Meet Kawhi Leonard, the Vince Vaughn of the Finals
Hutson, now the head coach at Fresno State, would regularly get in his car and drive the roughly 100 miles north from San Diego to Martin Luther King High School in Riverside, California, to see Leonard practice and play.
Eventually, as Leonard's star began to rise -- he was named California's Mr. Basketball after his senior season -- major conference schools began calling.
'I think he thought we were sincere in what we were saying and how we were behaving,' Hutson said.
'It's very simple. He wants to win basketball games, and work hard. He's a loyal guy, and I think that was important to him that we were sincere.'
Read Tim Bontemps' Kawhi Leonard profile here
Kyle Lowry, the last Raptor standing
'When I first got traded here I didn't really know what to expect,' Lowry said Saturday. 'I thought I would be here a couple years, and be out of here.'
Instead, he came and never left. Now Toronto finds itself three wins away from its first championship in franchise history. And while much of the praise has gone to former Finals MVP Kawhi Leonard and breakout star Pascal Siakam, it has been Lowry who, behind the scenes, has been driving Toronto to heights it has never reached before.
Read Tim Bontemps on Lowry's leadership here
Game 6: Party on, Toronto!
Most championship teams have clear through lines that trace their journey to the top: They draft a foundational player that defines everything that comes next, or acquire one who agrees before stepping in the door to stay for a long time.
The Raptors have neither. There is no apparent modern precedent for a team trading for its only top-five player in a walk year -- without free agency matching rights, without signing said player to an extension as part of the trade -- and having that player lead the team to a title that same year. Toronto may be the most unconventionally constructed championship team in basketball history, and its six-game win over Golden State has insiders across the league asking: Is there anything we can learn? Can we replicate what Toronto just did?
Read Zach Lowe's Raptors breakdown here
More from Game 6:
Kawhi 1st to win Finals MVP in both conferences
Klay injures left knee, leaves arena on crutches
Game 5: A most bizarre win for Golden State
Bill Russell was in the hallway. The trophy was polished. The stage was ready to roll out. The cameramen had plastic over their gear. The champagne was on ice.
The team doctors' faces were ashen. The general manager was sobbing. The heroes, the guys who hit the big shots and the man who saved the season with a block, had knots in their stomachs not smiles on their faces.
It was a most terrible win.
Watch The Nba Finals Online
There were no victors in Game 5 of the Finals Monday night. Yes, the Golden State Warriors had 106 points to the Toronto Raptors' 105. But Kevin Durant's Achilles injury and the circumstances around it, both in the present and future, thudded down on everyone's chest.
Read Brian Windhorst's Game 5 breakdown here
More from Game 5:
Can Warriors pull off epic comeback without Durant?
Sources: Warriors believe KD has torn Achilles
Golden State already bracing for life without KD
NBA players react to Kevin Durant's injury
Nurse: Late timeout was to give Raptors a rest
Watching Drake is almost as exhausting as being Drake
Game 4: Raptors push Warriors to the brink
It's been a balky and theme-less series, but in Game 4 something happened that would have seemed unfathomable two weeks ago. The Warriors, up by four at halftime, were outscored by 16 points in the third quarter. The Raptors pressured them on defense, double-teamed Stephen Curry, and attacked on offense, getting open shots and easy pick-and-roll baskets. In short, the Raptors out-Warriored the Warriors.
Read Tim Keown's Game 4 breakdown here
Kawhi's 3rd-quarter outburst deflates Warriors
VanVleet receives stitches after Livingston elbow
Klay: Injury didn't affect me; 'got to dig deep'
How rude! Raptors dunk on Warriors with Full House-inspired tweet
Game 3: For Toronto, there was no option but to win
It's a daunting thing, that championship DNA. If you're not careful, you can suffocate under the weight of the possibility of that dominance. Many playoff opponents have fallen victim to a franchise loaded with stars who, when they are rolling, are seemingly invincible.
Yet one thing was abundantly clear at Oracle Arena on Wednesday night: Toronto had no intention of wilting under the pressure of the championship pedigree of their undermanned opponents.
Read Jackie MacMullan's Game 3 breakdown here
More from Game 3:
Steph scores playoff career-high 47 points in loss
Lowry gets going, leads Raptors with clutch play
Courtside fan ejected for shoving Raptors' Lowry
Game 2: Six-Minute Monster -- The Warriors run that won it
The Golden State Warriors implemented the theft of these NBA Finals under the bright lights of the Scotiabank Arena in front of 19,800 incredulous witnesses wearing blood-red shirts and the stupefied daze of a crowd that just had their wallets swiped. This is what coach Steve Kerr's team does when it discovers its collective rhythm, feeding off a savage defense that clamps down with impunity, extracts turnovers and then transforms them into transition artistry that douses the spirit of even the most resilient opponents.
Golden State returns to the Bay Area having stolen home-court advantage with a 109-104 Game 2 victory. The soul-crushing 18-0 run to begin the third quarter highlighted every weapon in the Warriors' arsenal: the aforementioned crippling defense, devastating three-point shooting, and the kind of deft passing that keeps the ball moving and the defense guessing. It transformed a 59-54 halftime deficit into a commanding 72-59 lead that has altered the tenor of this series.
Read Jackie MacMullan's Game 2 breakdown here
What The Nba Finals Online Live
More from Game 2:
With Warriors reeling, Raptors let Game 2 slip away
Klay Thompson (hamstring) to get MRI, confident for Game 3
Relive the best moments from Game 2
Game 1: Toronto's version of Strength in Numbers
The blueprint against the Toronto Raptors was to reduce Kawhi Leonard's basketball life to misery, or at the very least considerable discomfort. Blitz him, double him, triple him if necessary, force him to give up the ball and dare the others to beat you.
It was a sound strategy on paper -- except the 'others' were not only expecting it, they were aiming to exploit it. So, it was a collection of 'complementary' Raptors who vaulted Toronto to win Game 1 of the NBA Finals 118-109 in a raucous Scotiabank Arena, delivering a roundhouse right to a team that so often has seemed invincible.
Read Jackie MacMullan's Game 1 breakdown here
More from Game 1:
Siakam stars for Raptors with all-around effort
Despite loss, Cousins relishes 'incredible feeling' in return
Drake, Draymond Green exchange words after game
The relationship that unleashed Steph's greatness
It's February, and Bob McKillop is about to complete his 30th season as the basketball coach at Davidson College. I have come to speak with him because Curry has said McKillop is a reason he did play Division I basketball and a reason he has been able to revolutionize the sport.
Although a stickler for discipline and a guardian of tradition, McKillop decided to let Curry shoot at Davidson with an abandon that he has never relinquished and that an emerging generation has taken as its birthright.
But he doesn't want to talk about Steph's shot. 'He had the shot when he came here,' McKillop says. 'I had nothing to do with it.' He talks instead about something that happened 45 years ago.
Read Tom Junod's entire story here
How Draymond Green found his zen
In a big moment, with the Warriors needing a big play to get back into the game -- and the Finals -- with Drake in his face and the guy he'd called out in his sights, Draymond Green did not combust.
'It's all about, 'Is [the fire] working for me or is it working against me?' Green says. 'When I'm channeling it to work for me, I think I'm one of the baddest motherf---ers on the planet. When it gets the best of me, I'm not so good.'
Read Ramona Shelburne on Draymond Green here
Detail: Kobe Bryant on NBA Finals stars
Detail: Kobe breaks down Curry's Game 1 performance
Detail: Guest host Diana Taurasi talks Klay Thompson
Detail: Inside Draymond Green's game
Detail: Kawhi Leonard's two-way mastery
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