NBA Premium Play 12/25: Boston Celtics @ Brooklyn Nets

NBA - 501 Boston Celtics @ 502 Brooklyn Nets

Projected Line: 182 points  | PK LINE

Under Avery Johnson, the Nets have always been a slow paced team and it’s no surprise that this season they are #30 in the league in pace factor – I have them with w/ 86.70 pace factor. However lately they have been playing in an even more insanely slow paced tempo – in the L7 games = pace factor = 83.78! Even the Blazers teams with Nate McMillan didn’t play at such slow pace!

By playing in the halfcourt, the Nets obviously are scoring less transition points – in those games they averaged just 6.3 fast break points per game and this bodes well to the Celtics defense who are dead last #30 in defending transition points allowing a tragic number of 1.28 PPP.

The problem for the Nets is that Brook Lopez isn’t playing at the same level before he got injured and Deron Williams simply is lacking confidence in his shot. I saw the Nets’ last game against the 76ers and Williams passed several times in spots where he was left open. Only Joe Johnson is performing well lately and suddenly the red hot Nets are slumping on both ends of the floor.

On the other side the Celtics have been likely the most inconsistent team in the league. Like last season they simply aren’t able to be competitive in bad physical spots like b2b games or against physical teams they struggle to be in-game consistent. Looks like the Nets will be using once again only Lopez on the front so the Celtics won’t be overmatched down low today.

If we remove their awful transition defense and also their bad off-dribble defense (Avery Bradley might play today and he’ll help the Celtics in this department), the Celtics are still an elite half court defensive team. In this month they played twice against the 76ers (who are very similar to the Nets in terms of pace) and the two games had 178 (regulation points) and 171 points!

This will be the third matchup between these two teams and the Nets won both games. That was the time where the Nets were playing solid offensive basketball with Brook Lopez dominating down low. After winning in Boston, the Nets had a 10-4 record but since then they won just 4 games vs. losing 8 games.

I expect this contest to be a pure half court game with the Celtics being able not just to hang around but also to win the contest SU.


Pick: 3 units (Single Dime Play) on 501/502 Under 186 @ -110 / 1.91 on Bookmaker

ADDED PLAY: 

Pick: 3 units (Single Dime Play) on 501 Boston Celtics (+3) @ -110 / 1.91 on Bookmaker