The Boston Celtics likely won’t have to rely on luck of the Irish to pick up a win this coming St. Patrick’s Day.
With St. Patrick’s Day just days away and to aid with your Massachusetts sports betting, BetMassachusetts.com used Basketball-Reference.com to examine the past three years of each NBA team’s performance during the game right before or on St. Patrick’s Day.
Based on this, BetMassachusetts.com found the Denver Nuggets are the luckiest team, according to win-loss percentages and average score. The Nuggets have won the past three pre-or on St. Patrick’s Day games with an average of 125 points per game. While it's not a blow to the Celtics Championship odds, it'd still be nice to hear that the luck of the Irish is on the C's side.
Luckiest NBA Team
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St. Patrick’s Day Caps Long Road Stretch
Boston, which ranks 13th on the chart with a 2-1 record and average score of 115.3, draws the Eastern Conference cellar-dwelling Washington Wizards on March 17. The Celtics finish a stretch of playing six of seven games away from the TD Garden.
They started that patch of games by losing the first two on the road to the Cavaliers and Nuggets, watching their 11-game win streak go away. Boston, which has the best record in the NBA, got back on track Saturday with a 117-107 victory at Phoenix. As of Sunday, the Wizards and Detroit Pistons are tied for the league’s worst record at 10-53.
BetMGM Massachusetts odds currently have Boston as the favorite to win the NBA title at +220, so it will be heavy favorites against Washington, which has been eliminated from playoff contention.
In the past three years, Boston is 2-1 on or near St. Patrick’s Day. The Celtics boast the NBA’s best record at 49-14 and they are 33-7 against the Eastern Conference as of March 10. That includes two wins over the Wizards, 126-107 on Oct. 30 and 133-129 on Feb. 9. Massachusetts betting apps list Boston at -115 to win the Eastern Conference. Milwaukee has the second-best odds at +300.
Last year, the Celtics took down the Trail Blazers 126-112 in Portland on March 17 to improve to 49-22 on the season. The late-night West Coast victory featured 34 points from Jayson Tatum and 27 from Jaylen Brown as Boston led from the start, taking a 63-48 halftime lead.
Damian Lillard poured in 41 points for Portland, but he didn’t have enough help.
In 2022, the Celtics took down eventual NBA champion Golden State 110-88 on March 16, the night before St. Patrick’s Day. The game took two hours and 14 minutes at the Chase Center in San Francisco, so it was St. Patrick’s Day on the East Coast when it ended.
Boston had three reach 20 points that night, with Tatum and Brown both scoring 26, while Marcus Smart had 20. Jordan Poole led the Warriors with 29 points after star guard Stephen Curry left the game in the first half with an injured left foot.
Curry missed the rest of the regular-season, but he and the Warriors got the last bit of magic that season with a six-game victory over the Celtics in the NBA Finals.
In 2021, Boston’s tough 36-36 season that ended in the first round of the playoffs included a 117-110 loss to the Cavaliers on St. Patrick’s Day. The Celtics only made the playoffs after a 118-100 win over the Wizards in a play-in game.
