Warriors, Cavaliers remain betting favorites as conference finals begin

The Warriors and Cavaliers are favorites as the conference finals start, with Golden State as the top pick to win the NBA Finals.

The Golden State Warriors are 7–0 straight up and 6–1 against the spread in their last seven postseason home games. The Warriors will start their seven-game series against the Oklahoma City Thunder at home on Monday night in the Western Conference finals.

Golden State is a 7.5 point betting favorite in Game 1 and a –170 favorite to win the NBA championship at sportsbooks monitored by OddsShark.com. In their last seven home games, the Warriors were favored by at least 8.5 points.

Heading into the second round, the Warriors were going off at +150 to win the NBA Finals with Stephen Curry's status up in the air and a Western Conference finals against the San Antonio Spurs looming.

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However, the second round worked out well for the Warriors, who got a healthy Curry back in Game 4 and saw the Thunder knock off the Spurs. The Thunder obviously won't be an easy opponent, but on paper they look to be a more favorable matchup than the Spurs would have been for Golden State.

Oklahoma City (+600 on the odds to win the NBA championship) seemed to relish in the opportunity to play as the underdog against the Spurs, handing the favorites two losses on their home court and wrapping up the series in six games.

The Thunder could be an underdog the rest of the way this postseason, facing Golden State in the Western Conference Finals and quite possibly the Cleveland Cavaliers in the NBA Finals, should they advance to that point. Through 11 postseason games this year, the Thunder are 8–3 straight up and 7–4 against the spread, per the OddsShark NBA Database.

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The Cavaliers are going off at +250 to win the NBA championship, and they opened as a 10.5–point favorite at the sportsbooks for Tuesday night's series opener against the Toronto Raptors in the Eastern Conference finals.

These two teams have taken very different paths to get to this series, as Cleveland has steamrolled its opponents with an 8–0 straight up and 5–3 against the spread, while Toronto has played the maximum 14 games with an 8–6 straight up and 5–9 against the spread along the way.

Cleveland is 4–2 straight up and 3–3 against the spread in its last six games against the Raptors. Despite the massive betting odds against Toronto in this series, however, the Raptors had only one less win in the regular season than the Cavaliers did.