Celtics open as -1000 favorites over Hawks in first round

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After a 116-105 win in Miami last night in the Play-In Tournament, the Atlanta Hawks have booked themselves a ticket to play the Boston Celtics in the First Round of the NBA Playoffs starting this weekend.

Atlanta becomes the East’s 7th-seeded team, while Boston was second in both the Eastern Conference and NBA overall at 58-24.

The series opens up on Saturday, April 15 at 3:30 pm EST at TD Garden in Boston.

Oddsmakers at DraftKings are heavily favoring the Celtics to win the series at -1000 odds, while the Hawks are listed as longshots to advance at +650 odds.

Game 1 of the best-of-seven series sees Boston favored by 9 points and at -390 on the moneyline.

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Of the First Round series prices currently available Boston are the biggest favorites to advance to the Conference Semifinals.

Betting on Boston to simply advance won’t return you much of a profit at those odds so you may need to get creative among other NBA futures markets available.

For instance, there are series spread odds and correct series score markets available as well. You’ll need to look at the Celtics to win by three (-2.5, -165) to get to anything reasonable though. The Celtics to win in a sweep (-3.5) will return plus-money odds of +230 as you can see in the table below.

But the betting markets don’t end there. Odds have been released for the total number of games played in the series as well: 4 games (+225), 5 games (+185), 6 games (+320) or 7 games (+425). You can also bet over 5.5 (+140) or under 5.5 (-170).

If you’re feeling confident about picking the exact outcome of this Celtics vs Hawks series the exact score odds are below.

Boston winning 4-1 or 4-0 are the shortest shots on the board and looking back at the history of these teams that makes sense. Boston was 3-0 versus Atlanta this season and has won each of the past five meetings between the teams. In the past 17 meetings, Boston holds a 13-4 advantage.

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Boston will obviously hold the home advantage in this series which will be a huge plus as they own one of the league’s top home-court records at 32-9.

Oddly, we just saw these team play last week, when Boston won 120-114 at home over Atlanta on Sunday.

Boston rested many starters and only outscored Atlanta in one quarter, the third, which proved to be enough for the win. Payton Pritchard led the Celtics with 30 points, followed by Mike Muscala (27) and Sam Hauser (26). The Hawks had six players in double digits for points, led by Garrison Matthews and Bruno Fernando with 19 each.

Previous to this meeting, Boston won in Atlanta 134-125 on March 11 with Jayson Tatum leading the way with 34 points for the Celtics, and Trae Young of the Hawks reaching a game-high 35.

Boston also won 126-101 in Atlanta on November 1. Jaylen Brown led the Celtics with just 22 points, but seven Celtics recorded double-digit points in the game

Atlanta just topped Miami and was leading by as many as 24 points before the Heat attempted a comeback and cut the lead to six late. Young had 25 points and Clint Capela dominated the glass with 21 rebounds. But the Heat are the league’s lowest-scoring team, averaging just 109.5 points per game (PPG).

The Celtics are a different beast, ranking fourth at 117.9 PPG, led by Tatum who averages 30.1. However, the Hawks offer plenty of offense themselves, ranking third with an average of 118.4. The Hawks have seven players who averaged double-digit points this season and two, Young (26.2) and Dejounte Murray (20.5) who averaged more than 20.

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The Celtics were one of the hottest teams to end the regular season at 8-2 in their past ten. They also ended on a high, beating this Atlanta team on Sunday. The win over the Hawks was their third straight to end the season.

It would be a massive upset for the Celtics not to advance here. And while both teams can score, one of Boston’s advantages could come from the deep ball.

The Celtics were sixth in three-point shooting percentage at 37.7 percent, while Atlanta was just 21st at 35.2. Boston is second in three-pointers made per game at 16.0, while Atlanta is 26th at 10.8.

In the three games between these teams, Boston shot 45.7 percent, 47.6 and 46.3 from three-point range. That vastly outperformed Atlanta’s 21.9, 29.4 and 28.2 percent from three.

I’ll give the Hawks one game in this series but overall Boston should easily advance.

Pick: Celtics to win series 4-1 (+190)

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