NBA - 501 Washington Wizards @ 502 Cleveland Cavaliers
Projected Line: Cleveland by 3 points
I watched some preseason games and Washington has kinda impressed me. I have some doubts about the coaching skills of Coach Randy Wittman, but the truth is that the team last season played hard for him by winning the last seven games of the season, a sign that Wittman got the trust of the players, who fought hard for him to remain on the team. During this offseason, Washington added one assistant coach, who will bring a lot of quality to the team: Don Newman. He brings more than 20 years of experience to the Wizards’ staff, including the past seven seasons as an assistant coach for the San Antonio Spurs. During his successful tenure with the Spurs, Newman worked under Gregg Popovich and helped lead San Antonio to a pair of NBA Championships (2005 and 2007).
I understand that Washington will be without John Wall and Nene Hilario for this game, but the linemakers are failing to realize that the Wizards are an improved team. I liked their work rate in all the preseason games, with Emeka Okafor and Trevor Ariza bringing a big defensive boost to the team. But the big difference was indeed on offense with a good ball movement and with an unselfish mentality from their players. In fact, Washington was #12 on the preseason in the assist/turnover ratio with 1.4 A/TO, while they had a 60.8% assist rate, also good enough for the #12 position. In comparison with last season, this was a clear improvement, as Washington had a 1.31 A/TO ratio (#28) and a 52.08% assist rate (#27)! Of course, this was "just" the preseason, but still their progresses were evident and another sign of that was the fact that a chunker like Jordan Crawford was quickly removed from the Wizards' starting lineup.
On the other hand, Cleveland was one of the team that least impressed me on the preseason. The Cavaliers had a lot of rebounding problems by ranking #28 on rebounds during the preseason. They also lacked any kind of offensive fluidity, mostly because their frontcourt isn't talented enough to create their own shots. Let's look at some examples: on their game against Milwaukee, Kyrie Irving and C.J. Miles combined for 24 FG attempts in just 20 minutes, while the remaining SF+PF+C had just a combined of 13 FG attempts! On the other side, on their last preseason against Indiana, Anderson Varejao had just 0-1 FG! It's clear that Kyrie Irving will have a lot of pressure on his shoulders to score against everybody and teams will quickly adapt to that this season. C.J. Miles has also been a chunker and he was quickly replaced by Alonzo Gee on the starting lineup. But the truth is that Gee didn't have a good preseason neither and if we add the inconsistent rookie Dion Waiters, we quickly realize that Cleveland will have problems on offense on this game. Defensively, Cleveland has also regressed on preseason by allowing 113.37, 105.84, 115.13 and 110.82 offensive rates to their opponents. Statistically, Kyrie Irving was the worst PG on the league in defending pick and rolls last season and he kept struggling on defending this kind of plays during the preseason.
I have every reason to believe that Washington will be competitive on this game, as I expect them to have an edge on boards, with their frontcourt being very productive, led by Trevor Booker, who was excellent on the preseason. In 71 total minutes, over four preseason games, with three starts, Trevor Booker posted the following averages per 36 minutes: 22.3 points (56.7% FG), 7.1 rebounds, 3.5 assists and 2.0 turnovers. I wouldn't be surprised if Washington wins this game outright, but Kyrie Irving is a terrific player down the stretch, so I prefer taking the Wizards plus the points in here.
NOTE: Right now, we have Bovada and Pinnacle (-113 / 1.885) with a solid line of Washington +6
Pick: 3 units (Single Dime Play) on 501 Washington Wizards (+6) @ -115 / 1.87 on Bovada
No comments:
Post a Comment