Celtics: Denver home underdogs for first time all season

When the dust finally settles on this NBA season, we very well might see a titanic matchup between the reigning champion Denver Nuggets and the league-leading Boston Celtics in June’s NBA Finals. That’s what makes tonight’s national television matchup between the two superpowers in Denver so exciting.

But beyond all the star power involved, like Nikola Jokić, Jamal Murray, Jayson Tatum, and Jaylen Brown, oddsmakers have done something rather unthinkable ahead of the matchup.

They have the Celtics favored, if even slightly, with a meager -1.5-point spread, over the Nuggets, who famously have one of the NBA’s more intimidating home-court advantages. In fact, according to Action Network’s Matt Moore, the Nuggets are home underdogs, with Jokić and Murray active for the first time in over a year.

That is pretty wild to think about:

The Nuggets are usually close to unbeatable at home. Thanks to Denver’s high altitude, which makes it hard on opposing teams, and also having one of the NBA’s elite rosters, the Nuggets know how to hold serve in front of their fans. But it’s not hard to see why the regular-season juggernaut Celtics would be the one to buck the betting pre-game favorite trend of Denver at home.

Boston is currently on a 64-win pace and may finish around 10 games better than the NBA team with the next-best record by season’s end. That could be the Nuggets. The Celtics are first in offensive rating and second in defensive rating and usually bring a sterling intensity to every game, every night — which can often be a rarity in today’s NBA. From wire to wire, so far, they have played like the league’s most consistent team with perhaps the deepest roster.

This isn’t to say the Nuggets have zero chance of beating the Celtics. They are, after all, the reigning champions. Beating Jokić in his home arena — the best player in the league — is never an easy task. Tonight’s battle should be an epic showdown between the NBA’s two best teams, and it might even serve as another excellent preview of the Finals.

But it’s just worth noting that the Celtics’ regular-season dominance has inspired so much confidence in oddsmakers that they have favored them in arguably the most challenging place to play in the NBA. With both the Nuggets and Celtics coming off tough losses that snapped long winning streaks, we’ll see how these two heavyweights respond on Thursday night.

One thing I’m very confident about: Expect it to go down to the wire.