Overwhelming majority of NBA executives believe Celtics will repeat as champions

Overwhelming majority of NBA executives believe Celtics will repeat as champions

The NBA released its annual 50-question NBA GM survey Tuesday, which asks the league’s top executives to answer questions on the best team, player and coach.

The Boston Celtics were one of the most dominant teams of the 21st century, finishing 64-18 while cruising to their first NBA Title since 2007-08–and their 18th-ever. They won 16 of their 19 games and finished their 82-game regular season with best offense ever (which gets topped every year) with a top-5 margin-of-victory ever. Believe it nor, their Pythagorean W-L (69-13) suggested they underperformed instead of overperformed, despite finishing with the NBA’s top NET Rating by a considerable margin.

We haven’t had a repeat champion since 2018, but an overwhelming amount of general managers across the league believe the Celtics will snap that trend.

According to the survey, 83 percent–or 25 of the 30 general managers–believe that Boston will repeat as champions; 13 percent (four votes) think Oklahoma City will win the title while the other three percent claim reigning Western Conference champion Mavericks will end victorious.

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A single team hasn’t garnered 25 votes since the 2018-19 survey, when Golden State garnered 26 of the 30 votes. Only two other times (Warriors in 2017-18 — 93%; Lakers in 2020-21 — 81%) has a single team received at least 80 percent of the votes since the survey started in 2002-03.

Additionally, outside of last season–which had Boston and Denver receiving the same amount of votes (33 percent; 10 votes apiece)–nine of the 22 predictions have actually held true, when it was all said and done.

Even after the Karl-Anthony Towns trade and Oklahoma City bolstering their roster with Alex Caruso and Isaiah Hartenstein, the Celtics are clear title favorites, per the sportsbooks. According to the Action Network’s consensus odds, Boston is +315 to win the title–a 24.1 percent implied probability. The next-highest is Oklahoma City at +687, followed by the Knicks (+774), 76ers (+948) and Nuggets (+974).

I tend to lean with the books and GM’s on this one, considering Boston retained each of its top-11 scorers from last year plus added Lonnie Walker and Baylor Scheierman. They have so much optionality and two-way versatility to where they still feel like the presumptive favorite, even if a few teams at the top improved. If Boston remains healthy, they’re the favorite, barring none.

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