Check Out Ray’s NBA Plays Today!<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\nNot to be. The Celtics, who would go on to win the title that season, went into Houston on March 18 and stuck it to the Rockets, 94-74 \u2013 Kevin Garnett dominating in the paint and Paul Pierce hitting a few dagger threes.<\/p>\n
Tonight the Celtics get a chance to end another long streak when they take on the white-hot Clippers in Los Angeles. The Clips have won 14 straight and bolted to the top of many NBA power rankings (including the one on this site), and for the first time since the franchise relocated from San Diego in 1984 appear to have a legit shot at a long playoff run.<\/p>\n
This is hardly a must-win for the Clippers, but beating the Celtics in the nightcap of the TNT doubleheader would be yet another feather in their caps and illustrate a changing of the guard among elite teams in the league.<\/p>\n
Can the Celtics put an end to the Clippers\u2019 run, the way they did to the Rockets four years ago?<\/p>\n
Well, a few of the names are the same (Garnett, Pierce, Rondo). But two full months into the season, Boston coach Doc Rivers is still trying to figure out what he has on his hands.<\/p>\n
Garnett has been consistent, Pierce is starting to score again and Rondo\u2019s numbers are compaprable to ones he put up last season. But just about everyone else has struggled, which has led to spotty play at home and 8 loses in 13 road games.<\/p>\n
Courtney Lee and Jason Terry were brought on board to replace Ray Allen, and Jeff Green is back fromn heart surgery. But the newcomers have sputtered.[ad-6571516]<\/p>\n
What burns Rivers the most is his team\u2019s inability to lock down defensively when it has to in the second halves of games. Without Kendrick Perkins and his willingness to knock players on their asses, the paint is available. The Celtics no longer play with an edge (despite Garnett\u2019s scowl), and haven\u2019t shown enough offensive cohesiveness to make up for that.<\/p>\n
Free NBA PICK\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nThe Clippers seem to be enjoying their status as the new Showtime team in Los Angeles. And they could be built to last \u2013 Blake Griffin and Chris Paul are playing only 32 minutes a game, and the bench has been solid. Plus, LA is a terrific cover team.<\/p>\n
The Clippers have gone 10-4 ATS during their streak. It\u2019s hard to envision the Celtics spending 7 hours on a plane, arriving in LA last night and less than 24 hours later knocking off the hottest team in the league.<\/p>\n
Clippers to cover. Parlay players might consider Clippers and over.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Celtics vs Clippers NBA Handicapping In March 2008 the Houston Rockets were the NBA\u2019s Blue Plate Special. The had won 22 games, the second-longest streak in NBA history, and there was talk that Tracy McGrady and the guys would challenge the league record of 33 set decades earlier by the Chamberlain\/West Los Angeles Lakers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":80,"featured_media":30471,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[45577,57512,57513,45579,11074,22387,4045,23074,57184,3942,37631],"class_list":["post-58710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nba","tag-boston-celtics-vs-l-a-clippers","tag-boston-celtics-vs-l-a-clippers-odds","tag-celtics-clippers-free-prediction","tag-celtics-clippers-picks","tag-celtics-vs-clippers","tag-free-nba-hoops-prediction","tag-free-nba-picks","tag-nba-betting-picks","tag-nba-betting-prediction","tag-nba-handicapping","tag-tnt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/80"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58710"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58710\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58725,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58710\/revisions\/58725"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}