Boston Celtics – Toronto Raptors

Boston Celtics vs. Toronto Raptors / NBA – Boston plays like in a trance and has a realistic chance to take one of the last two positions in the Eastern Conference that leads in the play-offs. According to what they showed it would be a shame if they don’t qualify for the play-offs as they truly deserve to be in it, just like Toronto, who has spent the entire season among the best teams of the East. Begins: 15.04.2015 – 01:30 CET
Boston Celtics

Boston plays the last days of the regular season like in a dream. The winning series has stretched to four games and besides that they reinforced themselves in the seventh position with 38 wins and 42 defeats. Compared to their direct competitors, the Nets and the Pacers, they have better head-to-head score and therefore are in an advantaged position. Boston has made a big leap forward when it defeated the Cavs on Sunday evening, who indirectly helped them as they rested their starting five players. Boston “thanked” for that gift with a victory of 39 points difference.

We have said several times that no one gave Boston a chance to reach the play-offs, especially when they let go Rondo and Green, but that move had homogenised them and after it they have been playing very well, and as the things stand now they have secured a place for themselves in the play-offs and the Cavs for the opponents, most probably, in the first round of it. However, to be sure that the seventh place is theirs they need to defeat Toronto, who is also in a winning series and fights for the third position in the East. They have the 12th attack of the league and are even fifth by number of assists in the whole NBA. On top of that is sounds a bit surreal that almost all players are excellent shooters (10 players average more than 8.5 points per game).

Probable lineups Boston Celtics: Bradley, Smart, Turner, Bass, Zeller
Toronto Raptors

Toronto has spent the bigger portion of the season in the very top of the East and it has been long clear that will have in the first round of the play-offs the home-field advantage. Of course, they would like to end the regular part of the season in the third position but it is questionable who would suit them in the first round of the play-offs, the Wizards or the Bucks? Only they know that, although on the first glance it seems that the Bucks would be a bit easier opponents, primarily because of weaker backcourt as the Raptors have 3-4 great guards in their ranks. Toronto is currently in a good shape as it won the last three games and have the overall result of 48 wins and 32 defeats.

We don’t need to stress that Lowry and DeRozan are the two main players of this team, two great guards who together average almost 38 points, 10.3 assist and 9.3 rebounds per game. Besides all that, they have a reliable bench player Williams who averages 15.5 points in just 25 minutes on the court. Toronto is one of the best offensive teams in the league that scores over 104 points per game on average, so their games are rarely boring.

Probable lineups Toronto Raptors: Lowry, DeRozan, Ross, Johnson, Valanciunas
Boston Celtics – Toronto Raptors PICK

Because of possible calculations due to “choosing” of the opponent in the first round of the play-offs it is not impossible that certain players get a break. That would take away part of the usual charge and the offensive players could profit from such situation.

Pick: over 208 points

Stake: 5/10

Odds: 1.93