The Celtics Ran Philly Out of Town, and Our -1.5 Cashed

Celtics 123, 76ers 101. Boston won by 22 in Philadelphia, and our Celtics -1.5 ticket cashed with room to spare. That's a HIT, and we'll take it.

The thesis was never about star power or narratives. Rest was even on both sides, two days and three games in seven apiece, so the call came down to scoring quality. Boston's 115.9 offensive efficiency against Philly's 108.6, plus the edge on the other end at 104.3 points allowed per game versus 107.9, pointed to a Celtics margin north of the number once we stripped out roughly three points of home court and regressed those 10-to-11-game samples hard.

A 22-point result lines up with that read, though we won't oversell one game as proof of a process. We don't have box-score detail here, so we're not going to pretend we know how the game unfolded possession by possession. What we know is the final margin cleared the spread by more than 20 points.

The price mattered too. We liked the -101 cost on Boston against the 52.1% market baseline on the 76ers, and the result rewarded that value. Same discipline next time: trust the efficiency gaps, respect the regression, and don't chase the score.