The Boston Celtics have been the NBA's best team for nearly the entire season.
They enter Monday with a league-best 57-14 record, putting them seven games ahead of the Denver Nuggets for the top overall seed and 11 games in front of the Milwaukee Bucks for first place in the Eastern Conference.
The last time a team finished 10 or more games ahead of second place in the East was the 2012-13 Miami Heat. That team, led by LeBron James, won the NBA Finals over the San Antonio Spurs in seven games.
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There are a lot of stats you can point to as a strong indicator of playoff success for the Celtics in the spring. One stat in particular that bodes well for their title chances is point differential.
The Celtics currently have the fourth-best point differential in league history. They are beating opponents by an average of 11.73 points per game. The top-four point differential teams in league history coming into this season all won the championship. Several others in the top 10 either won the title that season or reached the Finals.
The Celtics lead the league in offensive rating (122.5) and net rating (12.0), while trailing only the Minnesota Timberwolves in defensive rating (110.5).
This Celtics team, based on many metrics, is a truly great team. Of course, none of these stats matter if they don't claim Banner 18 in June. But there's no doubt that this is the best Celtics team since Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum's first season together in 2017-18.
If the Celtics are healthy throughout the playoffs, the defending champion Nuggets might be the only opponent capable of beating them four times in a best-of-seven series.
