Who is the real team to beat in the Eastern Conference?
Analyzing whether the Celtics or Cavaliers are better built to advance to the NBA finals.
Boston Celtics fans aren’t the only ones betting on the team to bring home another championship title this year.
The Athletic released its annual anonymous NBA player survey on Tuesday, which captured the league’s players’ thoughts on topics like who this year’s MVP should be, the most overrated and underrated players and more.
More than one-third of the NBA’s players — 158 in total — also cast their vote on which team they have taking it all this year.
The survey’s results show resounding consensus in the Celtics‘ favor to bring home a back-to-back NBA Finals win this season.
Anonymous NBA player survey results: Celtics favored to win title
In The Athletic’s survey, 137 players voted on which team they think will win this year’s NBA Finals.
Nearly 58% of them voted for the Celtics.
The Oklahoma City Thunder came in second place, with over 17% of players choosing the team to win the title.
Other teams that got votes include the Cleveland Cavaliers, Los Angeles Lakers and more.
Here is the full breakdown:
Celtics also get votes for best organization, underrated player, more
The Celtics organization, some of the team’s players as well as Head Coach Joe Mazzulla also got votes in other categories of the survey.
Here’s what they were:
- League’s best organization
- Celtics: 15.3% of the vote – 3rd most
- Most underrated player
- Derrick White: 7.4% of the vote – 2nd most
- Jrue Holiday: 2.9% of the vote – tied 5th most
- Payton Pritchard: 2.2% of the vote – tied 6th most
- Jaylen Brown: 1.5% of the vote – tied 7th most
- Jayson Tatum: 1.5% of the vote – tied 7th most
- Most overrated player
- Jrue Holiday: 2.2% of the vote – tied 7th most
- Jaylen Brown: 1.1% of the vote – tied 8th most
- Jayson Tatum: 1.1% of the vote – tied 8th most
- Best coach
- Mazzulla: 12.2% of the vote – 4th most
- Face of the league in five years
- Jayson Tatum: 6.5% of the vote – 4th most
Melina Khan is a trending reporter for the USA TODAY Network – New England, which serves more than a dozen affiliated publications across New England. She can be reached at MKhan@gannett.com.
