As you all will soon find out, I love the Boston Celtics.
Tonight we (yes we) are playing the Memphis Grizzlies. Ja Morant, Marcus Smart and Zach Edey. Except Edey is out with an ankle sprain and Marcus Smart is also questionable. As for us, Al Horford is out, as expected since it is the second night of a back to back and Derrick White is questionable.
Now that the Injury Report is out of the way. The Grizzlies are a hungry team and after last night’s hard fought win against the Buck’s plus our history of coming out and playing sluggish at the beginning of games, I can see us having some trouble with them. Ja Morant and the Grizzlies play a fast paced game, which doesn’t work with the Celtic’s 5 out offensive strategy. We play methodical and thought out, we look to get an open three. Memphis wants to push the ball and forces you make unforced turnovers.
Tonight is a test for Joe Mazzula. Can he motivate his team, who are finishing up 6 games in a 9 day stretch. They are ready to welcome 4 days off, who knows some of them might even be mentally checked out. I know I can be after working a full week, all I can think about is the weekend on Thursday morning. This team has been criticized before for not having a killer instinct, taking teams too lightly and losing games they shouldn’t have. Mazzula needs to get his locker room fired up.
Your favorite sportsbook (sponsor me please) has the spread set at 7.5 points, the Celtics are going to cover against the spread. We had a bad night last night from beyond the arc and we are due for a good shooting night. If you go by that line of thinking this take probably will be for you but Payton Pritchard over 12.5 points is a no brainer. He didn’t get much playing time or opportunities on offense last night given that he does not match up well with the Bucks and I think he will be ready to fire tonight. Otherwise on the gambling front, not much sticks out to me except maybe the O/U line set at 236 I might go under on that given the last few games the c’s have played have been pretty low scoring.
Anyways I am looking forward to the game, it should be fun to watch. If Marcus Smart does end up playing it’ll be interesting to watch considering he was always our spark.
C
In the future I’m going to be trying to post pre game thoughts and maybe next day thoughts as well. We’ll see how it goes, sometimes it is hard not to be biased towards the Celtics