Boston Celtics (42-21, second in the Eastern Conference) vs. Cleveland Cavaliers (39-24, fourth in the Eastern Conference)<\/p>\n
Cleveland; Sunday, 1 p.m. EDT<\/p>\n
BOTTOM LINE: Cleveland hosts Boston looking to prolong its seven-game home winning streak.<\/p>\n
The Cavaliers have gone 25-15 against Eastern Conference teams. Cleveland ranks eighth in the NBA with 28.4 assists per game. James Harden leads the Cavaliers averaging 8.1.<\/p>\n
The Celtics are 27-14 in conference matchups. Boston is at the bottom of the NBA scoring 11.7 fast break points per game.<\/p>\n
The 119.1 points per game the Cavaliers average are 12.1 more points than the Celtics allow (107.0). The Celtics average 114.5 points per game, 0.4 fewer than the 114.9 the Cavaliers allow.<\/p>\n
The teams square off for the third time this season. In the last matchup on Nov. 30 the Celtics won 117-115 led by 42 points from Payton Pritchard, while Evan Mobley scored 27 points for the Cavaliers.<\/p>\n
TOP PERFORMERS: Donovan Mitchell is shooting 48.3% and averaging 28.5 points for the Cavaliers. Sam Merrill is averaging 3.4 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games.<\/p>\n
Jaylen Brown is scoring 28.8 points per game with 7.2 rebounds and 5.1 assists for the Celtics. Derrick White is averaging 17.3 points and 4.4 rebounds while shooting 41.3% over the last 10 games.<\/p>\n
LAST 10 GAMES: Cavaliers: 7-3, averaging 116.3 points, 43.4 rebounds, 26.9 assists, 8.5 steals and 5.6 blocks per game while shooting 48.2% from the field. Their opponents have averaged 109.3 points per game.<\/p>\n
Celtics: 8-2, averaging 111.6 points, 51.6 rebounds, 27.9 assists, 5.7 steals and 6.7 blocks per game while shooting 46.5% from the field. Their opponents have averaged 99.6 points.<\/p>\n
INJURIES: Cavaliers: Donovan Mitchell: day to day (groin), Max Strus: out (foot), Dean Wade: day to day (ankle), Jarrett Allen: day to day (knee).<\/p>\n
Celtics: Nikola Vucevic: day to day (finger), Jordan Walsh: day to day (illness).<\/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 (42-21, second in the Eastern Conference) vs. Cleveland Cavaliers (39-24, fourth in the Eastern Conference) Cleveland;…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":38965,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3772],"tags":[83749,1297,7,306,305,193,3846,6,446,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-645259","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cleveland-cavaliers","8":"tag-83749","9":"tag-article","10":"tag-basketball","11":"tag-cavaliers","12":"tag-cleveland","13":"tag-cleveland-cavaliers","14":"tag-clevelandcavaliers","15":"tag-nba","16":"tag-nba-basketball","17":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116187837445055289","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645259","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=645259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645259\/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=645259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=645259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=645259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}