The landscape of East and West has changed this season, with the Celtics having a relatively easy path to the title last season, with few teams threatening them too much. But this season the league has produced two superpowers, with the Eastern Cavaliers and the Thunder in the West leading the way, and they are far behind the second-place winning team. Even so far, the Cavaliers have played 38 games and only lost 5 games. They have undoubtedly become a giant team in the East.
Although the Celtics are the defending champions, their overall strength seems to have slipped this season, and there are many games that should not be lost. The Celtics have a 28-11 record this season, and they are currently 5.5 wins behind the Cavaliers, and it will be very difficult to catch up with the Cavaliers.
Today, the Celtics nearly lost against the Pelicans, the penultimate team in the West, with the final score set at 120-119. And in this game, the Celtics' overall three-point shooting percentage was very bad, only 13 of 44 shots in the game, and the three-point shooting rate was only 29.5%. The Celtics have lost a lot of games this season and their three-point shooting percentage has been very low, which is also a testament to the polarization of the Celtics. They can beat any opponent when they're very accurate on three-point shots, but they can't even beat a bottom team when they have a terrible three-point shot, which makes them have a lot of uncertainty.
And the Cavaliers will also secretly laugh when they see the current Celtics team, because they want the Celtics to play this way. Because the Celtics' style of play is very uncertain, it is easy to collapse in one game. The Cavaliers, on the other hand, have a more solid style of play, and the Cavaliers have three-pointers, mid-range, and breakaways, and they don't stubbornly shoot a lot of three-pointers throughout the game, and they don't bet all their hopes of winning on three-pointers. This is their biggest advantage over the Celtics.
And the Cavaliers are also a very strong defensive team, so when these two teams meet, which team plays more solidly, which team may be more likely to win. I wonder what the fans think?