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Posted at 10:00 AM EST. Odds are subject to change.

Orlando +6½ -104 over Boston 

3:30 PM EST. Start with the split nobody's pricing properly: Boston is 4-1, winners of four straight, and every drop of it happened at home. The Celtics host the Bulls, Nets and Knicks, they fatten up, and the one time they left the Garden this season they lost in Detroit. This afternoon they're at the Kia Center  laying 6.5 against an Orlando team that is 0-2 at home and playing desperate — and desperation at home, with real players still standing, is a live thing in this league..

What's left of Orlando is more than the injury report suggests. Yes, the Magic are gutted, more on that in a second,  but Friday night, without their stars, they hung 121 on Toronto with six players in double figures, two days after Toronto had embarrassed them by 30. That's a team that answered. Franz Wagner (20.8 a game) has taken over the creation load and is producing, Desmond Bane just went for 28 with six threes, and Wendell Carter Jr. is shooting 65 percent from the floor while pulling down 8.6 boards a night. Boston, meanwhile, has a live leak: centre Mitchell Robinson, who's started every game, is questionable for rest, and if he sits, Carter's efficiency inside gets a clear runway. The Celtics also play slow,  a grind-it-down road game where the favourite has to manufacture margin possession by possession is exactly the profile that keeps a home dog inside the number.

Paolo Banchero is out with an ankle, Jalen Suggs is out with a knee, Jonathan Isaac is out too — that's Orlando's best player, its defensive engine at the point of attack, and its best bench defender, gone in one stroke, with two more rotation bodies (Penda, Nelson) on the shelf behind them. The Magic rank 22nd in offensive efficiency, they're allowing 118.4 points a game, and here comes a Boston offence scoring 120.8, with Jayson Tatum at 27.6 a night and Payton Pritchard arriving off a 30-point flamethrower off the bench. The trend line is uglier still, Boston has won seven of the last nine meetings, and the winner in nine of the last ten has covered the spread when these teams separate, they separate all the way. So this cashes one specific way. Orlando's committee offence repeats Friday, Wagner runs the show, the game stays in the halfcourt mud, and Boston's road legs show up late. It's a real path, it's priced a touch cheap, and at home with their season's first win in the building on the line, it's the side to be on. The great equilizer is on our side tonight.....the spread!

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