{"id":102307,"date":"2024-03-08T18:08:31","date_gmt":"2024-03-08T18:08:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.celticsblog.com\/2024\/3\/8\/24094179\/denver-nuggets-better-boston-celtics-championship-favorites-nikola-jokic-jayson-tatum"},"modified":"2024-03-08T18:08:31","modified_gmt":"2024-03-08T18:08:31","slug":"the-nuggets-are-better-but-the-celtics-are-still-the-favorites","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gamefootballmobileanimeiphone.com\/index.php\/2024\/03\/08\/the-nuggets-are-better-but-the-celtics-are-still-the-favorites\/","title":{"rendered":"The Nuggets are better, but the Celtics are still the favorites"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo by Brendall O\u2019Banon\/Clarkson Creative\/Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Nuggets beat the Celtics not because of free throws or refs, but because they\u2019re a better team. But that doesn\u2019t mean they have a better shot at the 2024 championship<\/p>\n

The title of this article was intentionally provocative, but that doesn\u2019t mean I\u2019m wrong. <\/p>\n

Right and wrong is such a nebulous concept in sportswriting. Statistically, nobody really knows anything and predicting the outcome of games is largely impossible. Otherwise, the sports betting industry couldn\u2019t possibly exist. <\/p>\n

Instead, this provocative statement that the Nuggets are clearly a better team yet the Celtics are still the title favorites is meant to illustrate the glorious complexity yet elegant simplicity of sports, and how with enough numbers, calculations, extrapolations, garlic, salt, pepper, and maybe a little soy sauce you can make any emotionally contrived belief into a reality. At least on paper.<\/p>\n

The Nuggets are definitely better than the Celtics. By \u201cbetter,\u201d I don\u2019t mean they have a better record (they don\u2019t) nor do I mean they have a better chance of winning the NBA Finals (we\u2019ll get to that). I simply mean that in a straight-up matchup, the Nuggets have a clear advantage over the Celtics. They are the only team in the league that can say that.<\/p>\n

The Nuggets present an incredibly unique challenge, both on paper and on a basketball court. Denver is 10th in offensive rating, which sounds low until you realize their 117.2 number is actually better than last year when they ranked 5th. What\u2019s alarming, though, is how they achieve this without many three-pointers. <\/p>\n

Among the teams I\u2019d consider to have a snowball\u2019s chance in hell of winning the 2024 NBA Championship\u2014Boston, Milwaukee, Denver, Minnesota, Oklahoma City, LA Clippers, and Cleveland\u2014Denver generates by far the fewest points from three-pointers, 27th in the league at a pedestrian 29.9 percent. The next closest team in that group is the Thunder, who are 11 spots higher at 33.3 percent. <\/p>\n

The lesson from that blitzkrieg of statistics is not \u201cevery team should shoot fewer three-pointers,\u201d but rather that the Nuggets are a completely different beast than their peers. For 29 teams, three-point shooting is like an arms race. It is not mathematically feasible to rely primarily on two point shots, given that one\u2019s opponent is statistically expected to make about 36 percent of about 35 attempts per game. <\/p>\n

That\u2019s 36 points, which would require 51 percent shooting on the same number of shots if one wanted to do that with only two pointers in the same number of possessions. That\u2019s pretty doable, but things get dicey when opposing teams shoot anything better than 36 percent from three. The feasibility of shooting two-pointers falls off as soon as you begin to scale three-point success. <\/p>\n

But basketball isn\u2019t played on a spreadsheet. The Nuggets routinely buck this trend even though the odds of successfully navigating a statistical asteroid field is 3720 to 1. Spreadsheets can track huge swaths of data, but they don\u2019t tell you how good a shot is. Enter Nikola Jokic, fine purveyor of getting everyone a really good shot.<\/p>\n

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