If great things come in threes, then this should be the greatest basketball gambling rivalry in the history of the ever – meaning of course the Cleveland Cavaliers versus the Golden State Warriors. The annals of the NBA are packed with bitter rivalries, but never have two teams faced each other in the NBA Finals three consecutive times. Not even when the Boston Celtics won eight championships in a row did they encounter the same team thrice in the finals – they did beat the Los Angeles Lakers back-to-back on three non-consecutive occasions. Here are the early NBA online betting odds for game 1 on Thursday at the Oracle Arena:
Basketball Gambling Odds
Cavaliers +7 (-110) 225½ (-110) +255
Warriors -7 (-110) 225½ (-110) -310
Another unprecedented landmark: LeBron James has been involved in the last seven NBA Finals – either with the Cavs or the Miami Heat – and has won three of them. In addition to that, the King scored 35 points in game 5 of the Eastern Conference Finals and passed Michael Jordan as the leading scorer in NBA postseason history. All things considered, it was a foregone conclusion that the Cavs were going to win their third straight and fourth overall conference title, as much as it was inevitable that the Warriors would nail their third consecutive conference championship and fifth overall – which they would have done with or without Kevin Durant.
Stuff to keep in mind
And since we’re talking about predictable occurrences, let’s just add that the Warriors are the basketball gambling favourites to win the NBA championship. And that’s where expected outcomes end. Because Golden State had the NBA online betting odds on their side last year, and we all know how that turned out. But just to rub it in: the Warriors entered game 4 with a 3-1 lead only for the Cavs to win the next three games to become the first team in the history of the Finals to successfully overcome a 1-3 deficit. The Cavaliers are pretty much the same team as they were the, while the Warriors of course have KD now – who fled the Oklahoma City Thunder to join the Dubs. And he couldn’t even do that with the panache of James’s The Decision.
Basketball Gambling Tips
Funny how you never saw Michael Jordan and Magic Jonson, or Larry Bird and Clyde Drexler in the same team with the exception of the original Dream Team. Reminds us of when we used to play NBA Live and four of our five starters always ended up in the All Star team. Nonetheless, the Cavs have already surmounted insurmountable NBA online betting odds. Hello? 52-year championship drought, anybody? No bias here, either; we all want competitiveness, and everybody loves a basketball gambling underdog. And it takes some serious super teaming to make the King and his Court the underdogs. At the end of the day, though, win or lose, one things is for certain; the 2010s will always and forever be known as the LeBron James era, just like the 90s were Michael Jordan’s era. From His Airness to The King.