{"id":13349,"date":"2011-02-12T20:35:27","date_gmt":"2011-02-13T01:35:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/?p=13349"},"modified":"2011-02-12T20:35:27","modified_gmt":"2011-02-13T01:35:27","slug":"pro-basketball-handicapping-miami-heat-at-boston-celtics-betting-picks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/pro-basketball-handicapping-miami-heat-at-boston-celtics-betting-picks-13349\/","title":{"rendered":"Pro Basketball Handicapping: Miami Heat at Boston Celtics Betting Picks"},"content":{"rendered":"

Miami Heat at Boston Celtics
\nSunday, 2\/13\/11, 1:00 PM EDT, TV:\u00a0 ABC
\nOpening Point Spread:\u00a0 Pick
\nCurrent Betting Line:\u00a0 Miami -1
\nOpening Total:\u00a0 190
\nCurrent Total:\u00a0 189.5<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
The Boston Celtics have won the first two meetings with the Miami Heat and look to win another Sunday afternoon<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Miami will try to continue leading the Eastern Conference standings and pick up its first victory of the season over Boston on Sunday afternoon.\u00a0 \u201cWe just want to see where we\u2019re at,\u201d guard Dwyane Wade stated.\u00a0 The Heat are a dominating 26-7 versus conference opponents this year, including an 11-4 mark on the road.\u00a0 The team is coming off a solid 106-92 win over Detroit in a game that saw Wade finish with 24 points, eight rebounds and seven assists.\u00a0 Miami is 26-25 ATS on the season and currently listed as a road favorite on the NBA lines page.<\/p>\n

The Heat and Celtics will be meeting for the third of four match-ups this season, with both games being decided by single digits.\u00a0 Miami dropped an 88-80 contest to open the season in Boston and then fell 112-107 at home on November 11, 2010.\u00a0 Star LeBron James knows that he must continue his strong play in order to pick up a victory in this spirited series.\u00a0 \u201cWe\u2019re still trying to get better every day,\u201d said James.\u00a0 \u201cWe\u2019re taking every practice and every regular-season game like it is the playoffs because we can\u2019t afford to lose an opportunity to get better.\u201d\u00a0 The squad has won eight-straight games and previously won 12 consecutive games earlier in the year.<\/p>\n

Boston will look to bounce back from a disappointing 92-86 home loss to arch rival Los Angeles Thursday night and pick up a third victory over Miami.\u00a0 \u201cI just thought mentally we were not a very good team tonight,\u201d said head coach Doc Rivers.\u00a0 The Celtics enjoy an incredible home court advantage, especially against Eastern Conference opponents, coming into the game with a perfect 17-0 record against such foes.\u00a0 They will need the help of the fans to get past the hottest team in the league due to losing four of the last seven games.\u00a0 Boston is 6-2 ATS as an underdog this year and 33-22 ATS when getting points the last three years.<\/p>\n

The Celtics fell to the Lakers mainly due to scoring just 33 points in the second half and shooting 30.2 percent from the floor during that time.\u00a0 It was a surprising result when considering that Boston leads the league in overall shooting percentage.\u00a0 The team is shooting 49.5 percent this season and today\u2019s opponent ranks second in hitting 47.4 percent of its shots from the field.\u00a0 Forward Kevin Garnett connected on just 4 of 13 shots in the loss and will need to contribute in a big way if the squad plans on winning against Miami.<\/p>\n

Bettors will likely back the Heat due to their 15-5-1 ATS mark on the road, while the Celtics are 2-5-1 ATS versus the Eastern Conference.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Miami Heat at Boston Celtics Sunday, 2\/13\/11, 1:00 PM EDT, TV:\u00a0 ABC Opening Point Spread:\u00a0 Pick Current Betting Line:\u00a0 Miami -1 Opening Total:\u00a0 190 Current Total:\u00a0 189.5 Miami will try to continue leading the Eastern Conference standings and pick up its first victory of the season over Boston on Sunday afternoon.\u00a0 \u201cWe just want to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":181,"featured_media":4388,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1444,133],"tags":[120,3622,764,66,707],"class_list":["post-13349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines","category-nba-handicapping","tag-boston-celtics","tag-eastern-conference","tag-kevin-garnett","tag-lebron-james","tag-miami-heat"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/181"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13349"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13349\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13350,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13349\/revisions\/13350"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}