With baseball season rolling, the Bruins near the top of the standings and Patriots talk helping fill what\u2019s left of the sports talk vacuum, the Celtics have taken a back seat in Boston. <\/p>\n
Brooklyn Nets (45-32) at Boston Celtics (40-37)<\/strong> Matchup<\/a> | Preview<\/a> <\/strong><\/p>\n Check Out Ray’s NBA Plays Today!<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n A half-decade removed from the championship that the trades for Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen produced, the Celtics are now banged up and limping toward what everyone from northern Maine to southeast Connecticut figures will be a short playoff stay followed by an off-season of speculation about when (if?) Danny Ainge will blow up the team and start over.<\/p>\n The weary Celtics take a 40-37 record into tonight\u2019s game at home against the Nets, and three games over .500 is just about where the C\u2019s deserve to be. Hoping to preserve as much energy as possible for the post-season, Boston coach Doc Rivers has kept minutes low for Garnett and Paul Pierce. With the rest of the roster inconsistent, the results have been predictable.<\/p>\n Unless strange things happen over the next week, the Celtics will finish with the 7th seed in the Eastern Conference and will gird themselves for a first-round battle with the suddenly-peaking New York Knicks, who have gone nearly a month since losing. Good luck with that. <\/p>\n The decision to keep Garnett around for another year or two has landed the Celtics in no-man\u2019s land. It keeps fans in the seats ad assures that the team doesn\u2019t become another Toronto or Detroit, but it also delays the rebuilding process that for the last few years has always seemed right around the corner. [ad-6571516]<\/p>\n The Nets, meanwhile, are pretty much locked into the No. 4 playoff spot and will be facing either Chicago or Atlanta in the first round. Tonight\u2019s game starts a three-game road swing (also trips to Indiana and Toronto) before the Nets close out at home against Washington and Detroit.<\/p>\n Brooklyn is getting incredible numbers from Reggie Evans, who has hauled down at least 10 rebounds in 14 consecutive games. But the Nets are more than a little concerned about Joe Johnson, whose shooting has been way off (9 for 27) since returning to the lineup last weekend after missing time for a variety of injuries.<\/p>\n In a game that doesn\u2019t mean a heck of lot to either team, we\u2019ll give a slight edge to the Celtics at home. Games like this can get out of hand as coaches empty benches and try to keep their rotations fresh for games that really count, but assuming that Garnett, Pierce, Evans and Deron Williams all log regular minutes, we like the Celtics in a close one.<\/p>\n CELTICS 97, NETS 93.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Nets vs Celtics NBA Handicapping With baseball season rolling, the Bruins near the top of the standings and Patriots talk helping fill what\u2019s left of the sports talk vacuum, the Celtics have taken a back seat in Boston.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":80,"featured_media":32877,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[57181,57180,4045,8667,23074,1595,57183,57182,8598],"class_list":["post-61552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nba","tag-brooklyn-nets-vs-boston-celtics","tag-brooklyn-nets-vs-boston-celtics-odds","tag-free-nba-picks","tag-nba-basketball-lines","tag-nba-betting-picks","tag-nba-gambling","tag-nets-celtics-free-prediction","tag-nets-celtics-picks","tag-nets-vs-celtics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61552","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=61552"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61552\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61623,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61552\/revisions\/61623"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n Wednesday, April 10<\/strong>
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\n 8 p.m. EST <\/strong>
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