Boston has a style advantage (Jan 1)

Celtics vs Nuggets odds

As the Boston Celtics travel to Denver to face the Nuggets, the NBA’s two best offenses collide on New Year’s Day in a preview of a potential NBA Finals.

The Celtics have the best record in the league (26-10) and won Boston earlier this season, but the Nuggets played great basketball in December, finishing with the league’s second-best record of four. Right behind the Celtics in Weitai. (23-12).

Can the Eastern Conference’s defending champions beat incumbent back-to-back MVP Nikola Jokic?

boston celtics

The Celtics appear to have rebuilt their ships after a rough patch after a long road trip that began in early December.

After covering with a win over a healthy Suns team on December 5, the Celtics continued their skid, starting with a national television beatdown by the Golden State Warriors.

Boston then lost four of their next five games, failing to cover any of them.

But since then, the Celtics have enjoyed a four-game winning streak, covering it in every game except the recent one against the Clippers. With the help of , the recovery seems to be progressing, and Boston is getting back to normal.

The Celtics will go up against a successful Nuggets team in the past, mostly for their style matchup.

The Celtics are doing a good job of containing shots at the rim. According to Cleaning the Grass, the Nuggets have his fifth-most shots at the rim (38.2%) and around the basket he has the third-highest percentage in the league (70.2%).

Boston ranks second in the league in blocking shots from that area (28.4%) and has the eighth-lowest percentage of field goals when opponents shoot (64.6%).

Boston’s defense has created difficult matchups for the Nuggets, and it has historically shown. In their last seven matchups, the Celtics are just 6-1 against straight ups and spreads.

Denver Nuggets

The Nuggets closed out 2022 with a successful second half of December.

Over the past six games, the Nuggets have gone 5-1, beating both the straight-up and the spread, and are facing teams with winning records every game.

Denver managed a win and cover against the Miami Heat on Friday despite losing the fight in several key statistical categories.

Four factors are useful indicators when looking at a team’s success: effective field goal percentage, turnover percentage, offensive rebound percentage, and free throw percentage.

Despite the positive results, the Nuggets lost in all four factor categories except eFG% (the most important one) thanks to an elite offense crafted by Jokic.

This season, the Nuggets rank second in the Adjusted Offensive Rating (116.4) behind the Celtics (118), but their atrocious defense (114.9), which ranks 24th in the league, puts the Nuggets in the Adjusted Net Rating (+1.5). Ranked 11th.

The Nuggets are not particularly equipped to deal with this Celtics elite offense that attacks teams across the arc. Boston shoots his third-most threes (44.2%) and makes them in his eighth-best clip (37.9%).

Denver also struggles to defend in transition, another area where the Celtics have been successful. Boston don’t create a lot of transfer opportunities, but when the Celtics get the chance, they take advantage of it.They rank him 10th in the league in transition efficiency, with him It has 128.7 points.

On the other hand, the Nuggets, who don’t give their opponents many transition opportunities, are the worst team in the league (138.1) for abandoning an efficient transition bucket.

Celtics-Nuggets Pick

Despite both teams playing well, I think Boston has the upper hand here based on the two teams’ playing styles and recent results. In his final three contests dating back to last season, the Celtics won all three of his matchups and won his final two by an average margin of 19.5 points.

Denver has also been playing a lot lately and showed signs of fatigue. Tonight’s matchup will be his fifth for the Nuggets since winning overtime at Christmas.

Meanwhile, Jokic and Jamal Murray averaged 37.5 and 38.2 minutes a game respectively. Meanwhile, Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown have played just 35.3 and 35 minutes per game in four games since Christmas. Murray is also in doubt, considering this is Denver’s first back-to-back games. If he is sitting, this line can move.

Bring Celtics down to -1.5

Choose: Celtics -1.5 or better

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