Celtics roll Bucks by 20 and our +13 pick misses

Boston 117, Milwaukee 97. Twenty points. Our Bucks +13 never had a real chance once the Celtics started pulling away, and the reasoning behind it aged badly.

The case was tidy: pull the nine-game gap back toward average, credit Milwaukee roughly 3 points of home court, and land on a fair line near 8 to 10. We leaned on Boston's slow pace, 100.1 possessions, as a brake on any blowout, and on their road offense averaging just 108.25. We also noted the Celtics had beaten this same Bucks team by only 7 four days earlier. Each point was reasonable. None of them allowed for a team that could separate by 20 in one game.

The model's mistake is simple. A slow pace caps total possessions, but it doesn't cap margin. Boston didn't need a track meet to win big. It needed to win the possessions it got, and it did. The 7-point result from four days earlier was one sample, and this time the sample moved.

Milwaukee's home court edge wasn't enough to offset the gap, and the Bucks finished at 97 on their own floor. A miss is a miss. The lesson is that when the underlying ratings show a clear talent gap, shrinking that gap too far is how you end up on the wrong side of a double-digit number.

We'll re-check the next line with that in mind.