No team comes close to the pace of play the Chicago Bulls have displayed in their first five games of the new season. This team knows how to play in only one gear and that’s full throttle. That type of strategy masks a lot of deficiencies a team has. It won’t win them many games, but on certain nights they’ll pull off an unexpected result here and here, plus they’ll be competitive in a handful of them against the lesser talented offenses in the NBA. That said, Chicago got blown out by 35 points on Monday night by the Celtics in what was a wire-to-wire win for the men in green. This team has a lot of work ahead of them, but the one positive has certainly been the play of rookie Caleb Wilson who is averaging 20.8 ppg in 5 games played.
The Celtics recorded another win on Tuesday, despite playing on a 2nd night of a back-to-back. It was much harder than expected against the Brooklyn Nets, but understandable considering the Nets had the rest advantage. Jayson Tatum saved the day with a buzzer-beating jumper from mid-range to ice the game in overtime, I’m hoping that the Celtics have learned their lesson from that win. Going into a game relaxed against an inferior opponent could prove to be costly, Friday’s game against the Bulls is another one of those as the oddsmakers have Boston favored by 15.5 points. The last 5 Celtics wins in this match-up have been by 35, 19, 14, 22 and 25 points.
Chicago is in the bottom 5 of most defensive metrics so far, they cannot get a stop even if their lives depended on it. Combine that with them playing the highest pace, they’ll be involved in a bunch of high scoring games this season. Their first 5 games have seen them allow 133, 134, 124, 125 and 135 points. Because of this I’m backing the Celtics to go over their team total of 124.5 points here.
Bulls vs Celtics Predictions: Celtics Over 124.5 Points is available at -110 odds at time of publishing. Playable at that number.
