Boston Celtics (32-18, third in the Eastern Conference) vs. Houston Rockets (31-17, fourth in the Western Conference)<\/p>\n
Houston; Wednesday, 8 p.m. EST<\/p>\n
BETMGM SPORTSBOOK LINE:<\/a> Rockets -5.5; over\/under is 216.5<\/p>\n BOTTOM LINE: Houston heads into a matchup with Boston as winners of three straight games.<\/p>\n The Rockets have gone 17-4 in home games. Houston scores 116.0 points and has outscored opponents by 6.0 points per game.<\/p>\n The Celtics are 16-10 on the road. Boston ranks second in the league averaging 15.5 made 3-pointers per game while shooting 36.7% from downtown. Derrick White leads the team averaging 2.8 makes while shooting 32.0% from 3-point range.<\/p>\n The 116.0 points per game the Rockets average are 7.1 more points than the Celtics allow (108.9). The Celtics average 15.5 made 3-pointers per game this season, 3.4 more made shots on average than the 12.1 per game the Rockets give up.<\/p>\n The teams meet for the second time this season. The Rockets won 128-101 in the last meeting on Nov. 2. Kevin Durant led the Rockets with 26 points, and Baylor Scheierman led the Celtics with 17 points.<\/p>\n TOP PERFORMERS: Amen Thompson is averaging 18.1 points, 7.8 rebounds, 5.5 assists and 1.5 steals for the Rockets. Durant is averaging 24.4 points over the last 10 games.<\/p>\n Jaylen Brown is averaging 29.5 points, seven rebounds and 4.8 assists for the Celtics. Payton Pritchard is averaging 16.6 points and 4.5 assists over the last 10 games.<\/p>\n LAST 10 GAMES: Rockets: 8-2, averaging 111.3 points, 49.2 rebounds, 25.3 assists, 9.4 steals and 6.7 blocks per game while shooting 45.6% from the field. Their opponents have averaged 107.0 points per game.<\/p>\n Celtics: 7-3, averaging 113.2 points, 46.8 rebounds, 24.8 assists, 7.4 steals and 4.9 blocks per game while shooting 45.7% from the field. Their opponents have averaged 103.7 points.<\/p>\n INJURIES: Rockets: Fred VanVleet: out for season (acl), Kevin Durant: day to day (ankle), Steven Adams: out for season (ankle), Dorian Finney-Smith: out (ankle).<\/p>\n Celtics: Jayson Tatum: out (achilles), Chris Boucher: day to day (personal).<\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n The Associated Press created this story using technology provided by Data Skrive<\/a> and data from Sportradar<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Boston Celtics (32-18, third in the Eastern Conference) vs. Houston Rockets (31-17, fourth in the Western Conference) Houston;…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":38965,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3794],"tags":[78405,1297,2889,7,292,194,4066,6,446,211,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-581511","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston-rockets","8":"tag-78405","9":"tag-article","10":"tag-athlete-injuries","11":"tag-basketball","12":"tag-houston","13":"tag-houston-rockets","14":"tag-houstonrockets","15":"tag-nba","16":"tag-nba-basketball","17":"tag-rockets","18":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116011554831325313","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=581511"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581511\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=581511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=581511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=581511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}