NBA Premium Play 04/29: Utah Jazz @ San Antonio Spurs

NBA - 509 Utah Jazz @ 510 San Antonio Spurs

Projected line: 211 points | San Antonio by 15 points

My conviction for these playoffs is that coach Popovich will play in a similar way to the one he used in the regular season: pushing the pace and use the team's main strength - their depth! So, I expect San Antonio to play super fast, to push up the rhythm and worn their opponents out to make the Spurs' depth a major weapon. It wouldn't make sense for the Spurs to be so successful during the regular season playing like that and then, in the playoffs, to use the Big 3 for 40 minutes each! The regular season ended 3-1 in favor of San Antonio, with the last game of the series, where the Big 3 didn't play, being the game that Utah won. Besides that, the pace of the games where the Big 3 played were 93.4, 96.6 and 96.7, a super fast pace to confirm what I've just said. 

Utah's frontcourt is quite poor on defense with Big Al and Millsap being too slow to rotate on the P&R's, as in fact we are dealing in here with the #5 offense in P&R Ball Handler against the #29 defense from Utah! The Jazz have a frontcourt edge in terms of offense and this will be well used by them and the best way for San Antonio to try to avoid this edge is to make the game faster, perimeter based and I strongly believe the Spurs will try that. The game where San Antonio won by 114-104 is the game that I believe it will be more similar to today's game, as San Antonio shot 21-27 FG at the rim, with the damage being done by their guards, with Parker 4-5 FG, Manu 3-3 FG, Leonard 3-3 FG and Green 1-1 FG. On the other hand, Utah had Millsap banged up on that game and that was quite evident, as Millsap shot just 1-8 FG. Utah will have some edge in transition and in post up plays via their frontcourt, but their inexperience might become a huge factor like it was for Indiana yesterday. Players like Harris, Big Al, Hayward, Favors, Carroll are very inexperienced on the playoffs and this will become a factor on this game.

I believe San Antonio with their depth will blowout the inexperienced Jazz on this game, on a game played on a very fast pace and with the Spurs' depth allowing that to pound Utah's defense for the whole game. Therefore, looking at all of these factors, I'll be taking both San Antonio and the Over in here.

Pick: 3 units (Single Dime Play) on 509/510 Over 205,5 @ -110 / 1.91 on 5Dimes

Pick: 3 units (Single Dime Play) on 510 San Antonio Spurs (-11) @ -110 / 1.91 on 5Dimes