The best time of the year is here!
2023-04-16
分享比赛
The NBA playoffs are finally here! On the first day of the playoffs, Eastern Conference's 2nd best team Boston Celtics is going to host Atlanta Hawks. During the regular season, teams met 3 times and all 3 were won by Boston and 2 of them were on the road. In this series, the 2nd and 7th seeds are going to meet. In the 1st game, I'm predicting that Celtics will cover the handicap.
If were are looking at the regular season, the Celtics were a real force as they had 57 wins and 25 losses. Per advanced stats, Boston had the 2nd best offense (117.3), 2nd best defense (110.6) which gave the best net rating in the whole league (6.7)! The Celtics were tied for the 3rd best home record with 32 wins and just 9 losses. Every player is healthy for Boston besides Danilo Gallinari. Jayson Tatum is having the best season of his career while Jaylen Brown has also been awesome.
A little different story is with Atlanta Hawks. Dejounte Murray joined the team, but the performance wasn't the best although the expectations were high. The team was so bad that they even fired the head coach during the season. The Hawks were the 8th seed after the regular season but were able to beat Miami Heat in the 1st play-in game. At the same time, Atlanta won only 17 road games and lost 24 during the regular season. Trae Young is the best Atlanta player.
The Celtics were one of the best teams to cover the spread at home. Boston covered the spread in 58.5% of the games while Atlanta struggled on the road as they covered the spread in just 46%. As I mentioned before, Boston won all 3 meetings this season and covered the spread in all games. The Celtics have won even the last 5 head-to-head matchups. I'm giving Boston the edge because they are a more experienced team. They were in the finals last season and they know how things are done. I don't see anyone who would be able to stop Jayson Tatum and Boston should start the series with a comfortable win.
