Projected line: Boston by 12 points
***DOUBLE DIME PLAY***
Philadelphia eliminated Chicago without being impressive and with a lot of difficulties. In the last games, their perimeter offense simply disappear with the good work of the Bulls defense and of course, their frontcourt isn't solid enough to produce points by themselves. Hawes had an excellent game in Game 4, but he quickly disappeared in the following games and Brand also quietly disappeared with 0-5 FG, 3-7 FG, 2-6 FG and 2-9 FG in the last 4 games of the series. Their inability of generating points at the rim was quite evident in these last games with 8-15 FG, 10-19 FG, 8-25 FG in Game 3, 4 & 5 plus 9-13 FG in Game 6, with a good percentage, but with very little volume.
Defensively, the Sixers were lucky that Rose got injured and with that, they basically didn't have to double team anybody. Also luckily for them, Boozer decided to not show up in the last game or I believe that the Sixers would be playing the Game 7 of that series today instead of playing against Boston in the second round.
In the regular season, Philadelphia won the "series" against Boston 2-1, but all games were played in special circumstances. We all know that age and depth aren't a quality from Boston, but in all three games against Philadelphia, Boston played always in a 2nd night of a back to back. In the two losses, the spot was even worse for them, as in the first game, they were coming from an OT game at home against Houston and in the second game, they were coming from a road game at Milwaukee and their game at Philadelphia was the final game of a long road trip. In those two games, Philadelphia was rested and so, it's easy to explain the heavy losses from Boston. In the Celtics' home win, both teams were on a back to back spot and so, in physical terms, both teams were on a similar spot and Boston took advantage of that to blow out the Sixers in that game. By the way, Philadelphia completely squashed Boston in the boards in all three games by grabbing at least 60% of the boards in all games.
The only offensive edge that Philadelphia had was in transition, where they can really take advantage of the speed of their guards to score 26, 18 and 14 fast break points, but then again, the Celtics were playing always in back to back games. In this series, Philadelphia will have this edge, but I believe it won't be such a huge edge as it was during the regular season. Besides that, the Celtics defense is a more than qualified to defend the Sixers. Garnett will have an easy matchup against Hawes, as his mobility will shut down Hawes, while at the same time, he won't have to spend a lot of energy in defense, so he will have enough energy in the tank to dominate on the offensive end!
Boston is also more prepared to play this game than Philadelphia, who will have to make more adjustments throughout the series. Atlanta and Philadelphia play with a similar style, as both teams are jump shooting ones, with a high volume of long twos (16-23 feet FG's). Both teams also lack a dominant big man to draw double teams (Hoford's emergence was a tough matchup for Boston late in the series though), so the Celtics should be more than fine for this contest.
On the other hand, the Celtics play in a completely different style than the Bulls played on their series against the Sixers. Philadelphia's defense is built to force their opponents to shoot long jumpers, clean up the boards and go out in transition. After the Game 1, Chicago shot 44-125 FG from 16-23 feet, only 35.2% in the following 5 games! The problem is that the Celtics are a team built to hit long jumpers. They have two great pick and pop players in Garnett and Bass, while Allen and Pierce have obviously a nice shooting range. Despite all the offensive struggles against the Hawks, Boston still shot 40% FG from 16-23 feet.
Therefore, I expect the Celtics to be able to surprise an unprepared team of the Sixers today and make this game a quite easy one for them. So, I'll be taking Boston today on a Double Dime Play!
Pick: 4 units (Double Dime Play) on 504 Boston Celtics (-5) @ -110 / 1.91 on 5Dimes
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