With the playoffs just around the corner, everyone’s got that one burning question: who’s taking home the championship this year? While fans will ride or die for their teams, ESPN’s latest odds point to something more grounded—Oklahoma City Thunder (+170) and Boston Celtics (+180) are topping the charts. Now, OKC’s rise has been jaw-dropping, but Boston’s consistency post-title run has been just as impressive. Behind that calm dominance?
The new ownership has been quietly doing all the right things. So when Brad Stevens stepped into the president role after nearly two decades of Danny Ainge running the show, he didn’t just tweak a few things—he overhauled the entire strategy. That shift, as seen in last year’s title-winning campaign, made even Carmelo Anthony sit up and applaud. “I think the credit should go to Brad Stevens,” Melo had said. “The fact that Brad Stevens studied the game, he studied the history of the game, he studied championship teams and organizations.”
But while Boston’s front office was drawing blueprints for dominance, their old Finals rival has been slipping hard. Since Mark Cuban handed the reins to the Adelson-Dumont family, things have unraveled fast in Dallas. Their attempt at a blockbuster Luka Doncic-Anthony Davis deal? A head-scratcher. And former Warriors star Matt Barnes isn’t shy about pointing fingers.
“A lot of these new owners are making mistakes,” Barnes said. But he gave props where due: “One owner partnership I wanted to shout out was the new Boston Celtics situation… allowing the old ownership to kind of show them the lay of the land.” That patience, he noted, is what kept Boston’s $6 billion empire intact.
On the flip side, Barnes didn’t hold back on teams like the Mavericks and the Suns. “You look at Dallas and see what they’ve done. You look at Phoenix and see what they’ve done,” he said on All The Smoke. “So I think the NBA needs to kind of really watch out for these new owners and making sure they have the right mindset and spirit and integrity it takes to run one of these franchises because we’ve seen two franchises with promising….Just Dallas was in the finals last year and Phoenix was in the finals four years ago. New owners come in and kind of completely tear down what was built before.”
Jun 17, 2024; Boston, Massachusetts, USA; Boston Celtics forward Jayson Tatum (0) lifts the trophy after winning the 2024 NBA Finals against the Dallas Mavericks at TD Garden. Mandatory Credit: Peter Casey-USA TODAY Sports
Both teams were recent Finals contenders, yet under new ownership, they’ve unraveled. Even Carmelo Anthony isn’t buying what Dallas is selling anymore.
Carmelo Anthony reflects on the Mavericks’ disastrous season
After buying Dallas’ majority stake back in 2000, Mark Cuban built a deep bond with both the players and the fans. So when he drafted Luka Doncic in 2018, his vow to never trade the Slovenian star felt more like a personal promise than a business move. But fast forward a few years, Cuban offloaded 73% of his ownership to the Adelson-Dumont family, and suddenly, that promise meant nothing.
The new ownership didn’t just lose trust—they lost the plot. They traded Luka for AD. And fans quickly turned their frustration toward GM Nico Harrison, who’s been catching serious heat over the team’s nosedive. And Carmelo Anthony didn’t hold back when chiming in on the chaos.
“This is where you just- it’s downhill. And there’s no stopping… He gotta be losing sleep right now, it’s gotta be very stressful,” Melo said bluntly on 7 PM in Brooklyn. He went on to point out the obvious mess, “You think you’re doing something that’s special, revolutionary and first, AD go down and now, Kyrie go down.”
But the blows didn’t stop there. “Nico’s getting punched in the mouth,” Melo added. Despite barely clinging to the last play in spot, Dallas now sits at a painful +80000 odds to win the West, per DraftKings. And as Phoenix will watch the postseason from the couch, the Mavericks might not be far behind.
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