NBA Season Starts Tuesday, October 17th - Are You Ready? (SportSteem)

While the NFL regular season and MLB playoffs are in full swing, the NBA kicks off its season tomorrow night with two marquee games. Don’t forget to register with SportSteem, make your picks, and track your record! Full instructions for using SportSteem are available here.

Celtics @ Cavaliers (-3.0), o/u 211.5

So many storylines going on here, on top of the fact that this is a rematch of last year’s Eastern Conference Finals. Kyrie was traded last month to the Celtics for Isaiah Thomas, Jae Crowder, and one of Boston’s coveted picks received from Brooklyn. There was already bad blood between the two teams, but it should be even worse now. LeBron hates Kyrie. Isaiah Thomas hates Danny Ainge. LeBron keeps saying he’s “questionable” for opening night, but it seems likely he will play.

Boston upped its talent-level in the offseason, but it’ll be awhile before the new players mesh and learn to play together. Last season the Celtics were the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference and they brought back a total of 4 players from the roster. A starting lineup of Irving / Brown / Hayward / Tatum / Horford can spread the floor and will be tough to guard; the flip-side is starting a 19-year old rookie and a 20-year old second-year player, on the road, against Cleveland could lead to some early growing pains.

On Cleveland’s side, they’re just hoping to tread water until later in the year when they start trying on defense again and, hopefully, get Isaiah Thomas back. They’ve brought in a couple of big names in Dwyane Wade and Derrick Rose, but it’s unclear how much they have left in the tank. Despite all the new names (Wade, Rose, Hayward, Tatum) the big storyline here is still LeBron v. Kyrie.

Sample tags:

• sportsteem nba cle ml indicates a moneyline pick that Cleveland will win
• sportsteem nba bos spread indicates a pick that Boston will cover the spread

Rockets @ Warriors (-9.5), o/u 230.5

It’s a testament to Golden State’s dominance that the second-best team in the West last season added Chris Paul and they’re still 9.5 pt underdogs tomorrow night. Nobody is going to be viewed as a legitimate threat to Golden State early in the season and Houston is no exception. It’ll be interesting to see how Chris Paul and James Harden gel on the court in the early going. D’Antoni has said he plans to only play them together around 18 minutes-per-game, allowing them to each dominate the ball for large stretches and then closing with both of them on the court. They’ll score - the question is whether they can slow down Golden State.

And no, they probably can’t. The o/u for the Warriors this year is 67 wins - a preposterously high number, but one that makes sense given what the Warriors have done over the last 3 years. If anything, they should be better this year as Durant will be more comfortable in the system and they didn’t lose any major contributors from last year’s championship team.

Sample tags:

• sportsteem nba gs ml indicates a moneyline pick that Golden State will win
• sportsteem nba hou over indicates a pick that the total score of the Rockets V. Warriors game will go over

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