Regardless of the composition of their teams, anytime the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Boston Celtics meet this season, it’s going to be must-watch basketball. Read on for a preview of their third meeting of the season this coming Sunday below.
The pieces maybe different now for the Cavs in their third meeting this regular-season meeting with Boston, but it’s still LeBron James, who’s going to most likely dictate how things will go for Cleveland. In the previous matches before with Boston, James has averaged 24.0 points, 11.5 rebounds, and 7.5 assists, while also shooting 58.8 percent from the field. George Hill, Rodney Hood, Jordan Clarkson, and Larry Nance Jr. will all get their feet wet in this budding rivalry between two teams that have a potential to face in the conference finals soon. With so many new pieces and with so little time to develop chemistry, the Cavs are going to rely on James more than usual at least for this game.
The Cavs are 4-1 SU and ATS in their last five trips to Beantown.
Kyrie Irving will share the court once again with former running mate LeBron, but we should not lose focus on the other peripheral pieces of Boston. Take for example Terry Rozier, who scored 20 points on 8-for-12 shooting from the field in just 20 minutes of action off the bench in the Celtics’ dominant 102-88 win at home against the Cavs on Jan. 3. Rozier and almost any other Celtic could have a great game opposite Cleveland, which features one of the most rotten defenses in the league. As of this writing, Cavs opponents are scoring 110.2 points per game – third worst in the league. Granted that the Cavs are expected to improve defensively with the adjustments they’ve done at the trade deadline, it would take more than a few days for them to be a cohesive unit, let alone play well against a well-oiled machine like Boston. Conversely, the Boston is among the best defensively with only 98.8 points surrendered per game.
