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Posted at 9:00 AM ET. Odds are subject to change

BOSTON -6.5 over Los Angeles Lakers

TD Garden – Boston, MA

7:00 PM ET. This is a line that immediately grabs your attention because at first glance, it appears completely counterintuitive. The Lakers have the superior straight-up record, they’ve been playing stable basketball, and they have a more encouraging profile if one simply scans wins and losses. Boston, meanwhile, has spent much of the early season battling through inconsistency, missing key pieces, and searching for lineup cohesion Jayson Tatum. It doesn’t help that Jaylen Brown isn’t going to be playing here either. But if the market functioned exclusively on optics, Los Angeles would be favored here or a smaller dog at worst. The thing is they are not. That’s the trap.

Oddsmakers aren’t grading these teams based on how the box scores look — they’re grading how sustainable the output has been, and how close each team has been playing to its true expectation. That’s where Pythagorean Wins serve as one of the most revealing indicators. Boston grades out with 15 estimated wins based on scoring differential, while Los Angeles grades at 12. Yet the Lakers show a record of 16–5, and the Celtics sit at 13–9. Put simply: the Lakers have run hot and banked victories thanks to favorable variance, while Boston has underachieved due to variance being cruel to them. When one team has been blessed by bounces and late-game fortune and the other has absorbed the short side of randomness, a correction is never far away.

Now introduce the rivalry element — Celtics vs Lakers, one of basketball’s marquee emotional stages — and the number becomes even more meaningful. A line of this nature given how sharp bookmakers will pay attention to it given the context, are rarely accidental. Boston’s physicality and their ability to slow things down will cause headaches for a Lakers squad that has been living off streaks and opportunism. When the tempo slows, when possessions become surgical, variance dries up, and the truer, more efficient outfit begins to separate. That fits Boston far more than Los Angeles. If one simply looks at standings, the Lakers are attractive.

If one looks beneath that surface, the Celtics are overdue. The oddsmakers have already declared their side — and we follow them. C’s minus the points.

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