NBA - 505 Charlotte Bobcats @ 506 Boston Celtics
Projected Line: Boston by 20 points
This game in normal conditions would be a game for Boston to toy with Charlotte, without showing great focus, as they will face Miami next Monday. However, this isn't a regular game for the Celtics, as they lost by 26 points at Charlotte last Tuesday! In fact, Boston is 0-2 against Charlotte this season! The Celtics were in terrible spots in both games, as in the first loss they were playing a back to back game, after playing a triple overtime game against Denver in the day before, while in the second loss, they were playing their fifth game in eight days, where they played an overtime game against Atlanta, then they had a physical game at Oklahoma City, just to travel to Charlotte to face the Bobcats in the following day. In fact, the spot was so tough that Paul Pierce didn't even play in order to rest. As Boston is a jump shooting team, they immediately struggle on offense in very tough spots and this was what happened on their game at Charlotte last Tuesday night. Today things will be very different. Boston had 2 days off to rest and they are on a home-home spot, while Charlotte is the team on a tough spot this time.
The Bobcats had a real chance to win their last night's game at Toronto and so, Coach Dunlap asked for a massive effort of his key players to try to achieve that. This is why Gerald Henderson played 43 minutes, Kemba Walker 41 minutes and even Josh McRoberts played 38 minutes! I took Toronto in yesterday's game and even though we won the play, the truth is that it was weird to see the Raptors not taking advantage of the Bobcats's poor transition defense, especially considering how athletic the Raptors are on the backcourt. Toronto scored just 3 fast break points, with an awful 3-7 FG on 11 transition plays for a terrible 0.73 PPP! What saved our play was Toronto's good defensive intensity on the fourth quarter, where they completely shutdown the Bobcats's offense, allowing just 10 points, with 8 of them coming from free throws.
Charlotte's offense is super dependent from what Gerald Henderson and Kemba Walker can do on offense. On last Tuesday's game against Boston, Henderson exploded with 11-19 FG and 12-12 FT for 35 points! However, these two players were on the court for over 40 minutes yesterday and today, against a rested Celtics's defense who have Avery Bradley and Courtney Lee, the Bobcats's offense will struggle big time. With the Bobcats having their backcourt limited, the rest of their offense is very weak and so, they won't be competitive at all tonight against an unselfish Celtics's offense, who will easily find some great open spots for their shooters. Boston won't be just happy in winning tonight after getting humiliated last Tuesday and so, I expect the Celtics to absolutely crush Charlotte tonight. Therefore, I'll be taking Boston in here.
Pick: 3 units (Single Dime Play) on 506 Boston Celtics (-16) @ -110 / 1.91 on Bookmaker
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