Fall is here, which means cooler temperatures, changing of the leaves and the start of a new professional basketball season.  It has now  been over 100 days since the Boston Celtics defeated the Dallas Mavericks in five games to win the 2024 NBA Finals.

So far this season, both the Celtics and Mavericks have looked like they have a shot to make it back. Other strong contenders so far are the Cleveland Cavaliers, the Oklahoma City Thunder and the Los Angeles Lakers. 

Today, we are going to find out from students at Waynesburg University which team they think will win this year’s finals.

The closest NBA team to Waynesburg is the Cleveland Cavaliers, who are around three hours away. This is different from the NFL, NHL, and MLB, which all have teams just an hour north in Pittsburgh. 

To eliminate bias, I first asked the subjects who their favorite team is. 

In a survey conducted on a Google Form among 32 randomly selected students on campus, eight of them (25%), happen to be Cavaliers fans. Only two of those eight picked the Cavaliers to win the NBA Finals, the only two people in the whole survey to do so. The most common answer to win the championship among other students that root for the Cavaliers was the Milwaukee Bucks. The Bucks are no stranger to winning, as they took home the trophy in the 2020-2021 season.

“I think the New York Knicks might be able to finally break their curse,” said one Cavaliers fan, referring to the fact that the Knicks have not appeared in The Finals since 1999 and have not won a title since 1973.

In this survey, the second most common favorite team among Waynesburg students is the Philadelphia 76ers at six out of 32. Two of those six picked the 76ers to win it all. One Chicago Bulls fan also picked the 76ers to win the title. 

One team received one vote to win the NBA Finals: the Minnesota Timberwolves. Along with the Cavaliers, the Lakers received two votes. The 76ers, Knicks and Mavericks got three votes apiece. 

Three teams tied for second in votes at four each: the Bucks, along with the Thunder and Denver Nuggets. 

The most commonly voted team to win it all is none other than the defending champions, the Boston Celtics, at six out of the 32 votes. One Lakers fan predicted a rematch of last year’s NBA Finals, Mavericks vs Celtics, with the Celtics coming out on top again. 

It is still too early to tell which teams are contenders and which teams are pretenders, but my early prediction is the Dallas Mavericks.