Boston Celtics at Milwaukee Bucks
Sunday, November 8, 2026
8:00 PM ET, Fiserv Forum
The Celtics are 12.5-point favorites at most books with the total at 223.5, and my play is Celtics -12.5.
Boston beat this team by seven on Wednesday without Jayson Tatum. Tatum is playing Sunday.
That’s most of the case right there, but let’s stretch it out. The first meeting at TD Garden looked like a rout early. Boston led by 22 in the first half, then Milwaukee clawed all the way back and actually took a 92-91 lead with 6:50 to go before the Celtics pulled away for a 109-102 win. Bucks fans will tell you that proves their team can hang. I’d say it proves something else: Milwaukee can play hard for 20 minutes, and it still can’t finish.
The Bucks keep building leads and handing them back
This is the first season in Milwaukee after the Giannis Antetokounmpo trade sent him to Miami, and the hangover is real. The Bucks are 1-8, losers of five straight, and they found a new way to lose Friday night. They held a double-digit lead on Toronto and still lost 121-107. Per Bucks On SI, they’ve also led in the fourth quarter against Boston, Washington and Chicago and lost all three, usually with a pile of missed shots, turnovers and fouls down the stretch.
Tyler Herro has been terrific in his hometown, scoring 22.3 points a night on 42.6% from three. He’s also honest about what he’s working with. “We don’t have the best talent. We’re not like, a huge, talented team, so how can we get advantages? It’s playing hard,” he said after the Boston loss, per the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Effort is a fine plan. It just doesn’t fix a defense that gives up 120.7 points per 100 possessions, fourth-worst in the league according to Basketball Reference.
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Tatum turns a close call into a long night
Boston is outscoring opponents by 10 points per 100 possessions, a top-three mark in the league, and it’s doing it on both ends. Only one team allows fewer points per game. Tatum looks like himself, too. He scored 34 with nine assists in just 29 minutes during the 119-80 beatdown of Charlotte. Put him back next to Derrick White and Paul George, and the Bucks’ comeback math gets a lot harder.
The Celtics have also won four straight in this series, and both teams come in with clean injury reports, so nobody can hide behind a missing piece.
Where this goes wrong. Boston’s schedule has been soft. Once you adjust for opponents, its edge over Milwaukee shrinks to something close to this spread. Twelve and a half points is also a lot to ask on the road against a team that plays hard, and Boston could easily cruise with a 15-point lead and give up a backdoor cover late. Herro is good enough to drop 30 and make the fourth quarter interesting.
But Milwaukee has given up big runs all season, and this time it’s facing a full-strength Celtics team. I expect the Bucks to make another run. I expect it to come up short again.
Projected score: Celtics 121, Bucks 104
The Pick: Celtics -12.5 (-110)
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