NBA - 705 Boston Celtics @ 706 Utah Jazz
Projected Line: 186 points
This will be the third road game for Boston in four days, after playing at Phoenix and Portland. Yesterday against the Blazers, Doc Rivers actually managed well the playing time of his roster and nobody played more than 35 minutes (Avery Bradley), with 10 players being used. Of course this is still a poor spot for the Celtics, as Utah is a very powerful team, but Boston will surely try to set their usual slow pace tonight in order to try to prevail in here on half court defense. I believe Boston will offensively struggle in here. We know that they are mainly a jump shooting team and after having had decent 3pts numbers on their first three games of their road trip (7-20, 9-20 and 10-22 treys), they struggled yesterday at Portland with 2-13 3pts! The Celtics have been showing an interesting transition game, but Utah is a top 10 defensive team on this area.
Utah had once again on their last game the problem that I've been telling about Coach Corbin: he is giving too many minutes to the wrong players! Jamaal Tinsley, Randy Foye and Marvin Williams don't deserve to be starters on this team, but guess what? At LA against the Clippers, these three players shot a combined of 0-9 FG, while showing some terrible defense! Earl Watson, DeMarre Carroll or Alec Burks aren't better offensively, but their aggressiveness on the defensive end is a plus for the Jazz, who gain a much bigger physical dimension. For tonight, I have some doubts on what coach Corbin will do, but assuming he will use these young players more, Utah will be much improved on defense tonight. Of course Utah will have some edge down low against Boston's undersized frontcourt. However, Utah doesn't have a consistent outside shooting game and on their last game against the Clippers, they shot 1-15 3pts, something that will allow the Celtics to pack the paint tonight and give some extra space on the perimeter, while daring Utah's bad outside shooters to shoot the ball from the perimeter.
With the Celtics trying to dictate a half court style for this game, but with a jump shooting mindset on offense, they will struggle. On the other hand, Utah has a lot of indecision on their rotations and this made them lose some offensive flow. Therefore, I expect this game to be a low scoring game and so, I'll be taking the Under in here.
Pick: 3 units (Single Dime Play) on 705/706 Under 190 @ -110 / 1.91 on Bookmaker
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