basketball | Monday, January 2, 2023 2:25 PM (Revised at: Wednesday, January 4, 2023 8:59 AM)

Oklahoma City Thunder vs. Boston Celtics Best Bet: Celtics Building Momentum

Aleksa Drobnjak

Oklahoma City Thunder vs. Boston Celtics Best Bet: Tuesday, January 3rd

The league’s top team is coming off a loss to the Nuggets in the last round and will be hosted by the Thunder tonight at Peycom Center. Oklahoma has been dealing with a lot of injury problems lately, and tonight will be no different. The Celtics will try to rebuild their momentum and start a new winning streak tonight in Texas.

In this article:

Oklahoma City Thunder vs. Boston Celtics Preview
Oklahoma City Thunder vs. Boston Celtics Best Bet

Oklahoma City Thunder vs. Boston Celtics Preview

Tue, Jan 4th 01:00m (UK time)

The Thunder have been struggling with many injury problems lately and tonight they will be missing J. Robinson-Earl (ankle), A. Pokusevski (leg), C. Holmgren (foot), O. Dieng (upper chest). Even with a full squad, they should not be fighting for the top of the table due to their inexperienced and young core. They are currently sitting on a 15W 21L panel. The Thunder are currently the 24th offence in the league with 110.5 OFFRTG and interestingly 3rd in the league with a 102.5 pace rating just behind the Warriors and the Lakers. This gives us a very good basis for our bet as it gives the game the opportunity to progress to a higher score and more possession which means there are more opportunities to cover the spread (opens at -8.5). OKC play their game and they do it at a very fast pace.

The Celtics are currently No. 1 in the Eastern Conference and hold a 26 W 11L record. Losing to a reborn Nuggets team (123-111), they will certainly look to work through the issues they faced in the last game and end up winning with authority. They are pretty much ranked top5 in the league in every offensive and defensive aspect and if you look at the sheer stats they should be even bigger favorites tonight with all the absences OKC will be facing. J. Tatum has had a poor performance for his standards in the last few games (average “only” 26.5 points) and we believe he will use slightly weaker opponents like the Thunder to get back up the scoring charts.

In terms of injuries, the only thing missing for the Celtics is D. Gallinari with a knee injury.

Although the Thunder has been covering the spread against them even in the losses this season, they haven’t been facing so many health issues and it will be very interesting to see how things will shape out for them tonight.

Oklahoma City Thunder vs. Boston Celtics Best Bet

The Celtics have won the last 3 games against the Thunder by an average margin of 6.5 points. With all the absences the home side is facing tonight they will have a very short rotation, we are counting on the Celtics to bridge the gap. The discrepancy in quality between teams is even greater than the money line would suggest.

Selection: Celtics -8.0
Best Odds: 1.71 (bet365)
Stakes: 3/10

Odds as of 1:00 pm January 3rd, 2022. Odds may now differ.

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