NBA Layoffs: Impact of 11-Day Layover Teams in Finals

For the second time in the last four years, the Boston Celtics have reached the NBA Finals, with the champions of the Eastern Conference playing either the Dallas Mavericks or the Minnesota Timberwolves in the best-of-seven series.  

Hopefully for Boston fans, this year’s finals will go better than the franchise’s last two appearances in the series, with the C’s losing in 2010 to the Los Angeles Lakers and to the Golden State Warriors in six games during the 2022 iteration of the league finals.  

Game 1 is set for June 6. With 11 days until the start of the series, BetMassachusetts.com broke from researching the best Massachusetts sports betting sites and apps to find out about the results of long layoffs between recent series can tell us. Using Sports-Reference.com, we found that over the past two decades, only 5 teams have had an 11-day timeframe between winning the conference game and starting Game 1 of the NBA Finals. And 11 days is the longest waiting period in the past 20 years.  

Note: The timeframe is counting the end date within the calculation. 

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Teams With 11 Days Between Conference Finals and NBA Finals

NBA Layoffs: Results in Finals After 11-Day Wait 

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Will Celtics Buck NBA’s Recent Layoff Woes?

Since the 2013 NBA Finals, teams that entered the championship series with an 11-day layoff like the Celtics have not fared well in the final round, with two of the five going on to win the Larry O’Brien trophy, while three others fell by the wayside of history.  

The teams that came out on top were last year’s Denver Nuggets and the 2017 Warriors, while the Warriors of 2019 were joined by the 2015 Cleveland Cavaliers and the 2013 San Antonio Spurs in losing during the NBA Finals.  

Since 2000, Boston has posted a 1-2 series record in the NBA Finals, giving Celtics fans hope that Joe Mazzulla and his staff can get the franchise over the hump for the first time in a decade-and-a-half when the league’s championship series wraps up next month.  

Stick with BetMasssachusetts.com for the best deals across MA betting apps during the Finals.

USA Today photo by Trevor Ruszkowski.

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