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

Houston -4½ -110 over Boston 

8:30 PM EST. We are sticking with the fade on Boston agaiin tonight. This matchup starts with the schedule, because Boston is walking into the worst spot on its young season. The Celtics play at Houston tonight on the second night of a back-to-back, having won in Orlando yesterday afternoon before flying west, while the Rockets spent yesterday at home dismantling Oklahoma City by 21 and slept in their own beds. Houston is 6-1 and 3-0 in its own building, and the season's early arithmetic favours the hosts: the Rockets have outscored opponents by 12.3 points per 100 possessions to Boston's 10.1, the best margin the Celtics have faced all year. Jayson Tatum carried 34 minutes in Orlando, and Boston has made a habit of losing road games exactly like this one, when the rest column tilts against it.

Houston's offence is built to punish tired legs in layers. Kevin Durant is scoring 22.0 a night and Alperen Sengun 22.8, which means Boston's defence can't cheat toward either one, and the Rockets put up 120-plus as a matter of routine. Tatum, meanwhile, is scoring through a cold spell from deep — 28.3 points a game but just 24.4 percent from three — so his damage comes on drives and midrange volume that a set, rested defence handles better in the fourth quarter than in the first. The glass is where this cover probably gets decided: Mitchell Robinson, one of the league's best offensive rebounders, was rested Sunday and his status for tonight was still unsettled in this morning's reports,  if he sits again, Boston's second-chance lifeline and its only real size answer for Sengun both go with him, and Houston's margin path gets a lot straighter.

Steven Adams is out with a calf strain, Clint Capela is a game-time decision with an ankle, and Adams and Capela happen to be the Rockets' second-chance engine, if Capela joins Adams on the shelf, Sengun has to carry nearly the whole centre load and Houston's rebounding edge shrinks to a rumour. Reed Sheppard (back) is also a game-time call and Fred VanVleet has a day-to-day knee tag, so the home rotation isn't clean either. Payton Pritchard shot it terribly yesterday —the kind of night that tends to correct itself violently. The -4½ demands a genuine margin, not a coin-flip win. But fresh legs at home, the league's form frontcourt, and a visitor on a travel back-to-back is precisely the recipe that manufactures margin.

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