Last night\u2019s loss in San Antonio by the Philadelphia 76ers gives the Charlotte Hornets now an opportunity to leap over them in the standings for the 7th seed. In order to achieve that though, they have to go into TD Garden and take down the Boston Celtics. LaMelo and co. have impressed with a 4-game win streak, scoring 120+ in 3 consecutive games, but I think we can all agree the Celtics are a different animal compared to the Nets, Suns, Pacers and Timberwolves. Charlotte has just 1 win in 8 meetings, while on the road in Boston they\u2019ve won just twice in 17 visits. Coby White is the only potential absentee, the Hornets can base their optimism on their recent shooting from three-point land here. In their last 3 games they\u2019ve knocked down 19, 24 and 18 threes.<\/p>\n
The Celtics have been slightly less prolific from three-point land over their last 3 games, but they still won all 3 and are on a run of 8 wins in their last 10 outings. This team has exceeded expectations all season, but especially since Jayson Tatum came back. From an individual standpoint he has looked really solid, Boston fans are dreaming of another deep Playoff run and for good reason. They\u2019ve also been a reliable bet lately, covering 6 times in their last 7 games, while against Eastern Conference opponents they\u2019ve done it in 5 of 6 such games. Believe it or not there\u2019s nobody listed on the injury report for this game, this is a rarity for any team at this point of the season, let alone the Celtics who played more than half of the year without their best player from last year.<\/p>\n
This is a good test for both sides to see where they\u2019re at in the final week of the regular season. Both meetings from earlier this year were blowout wins and on both occasions we saw the road team come out on top. I think it\u2019s time we see a home win in this series, Boston has been reliable enough to warrant our trust here. Charlotte\u2019s high-octane offense will work on most nights, but on most nights in the NBA you face mediocre defenses these days. The Celtics are anything but mediocre on that end, let\u2019s back them to come out on top here.<\/p>\n
Hornets vs Celtics prediction: Celtics -5.5 (-110) available at time of publishing. Playable at that number.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last night\u2019s loss in San Antonio by the Philadelphia 76ers gives the Charlotte Hornets now an opportunity to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7557,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3766],"tags":[7,45,75,3798,46,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-703271","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boston-celtics","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-boston","10":"tag-boston-celtics","11":"tag-bostonceltics","12":"tag-celtics","13":"tag-nba"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116363495435193952","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703271","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=703271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703271\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=703271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=703271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=703271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}