NBA - 511 San Antonio Spurs @ 512 Los Angeles Lakers
Projected Line: 203 points
***TRIPLE DIME PLAY***
San Antonio is coming from a win against Portland, where they really pushed the game to be a fast paced one, as Gregg Popovich knew that Portland had no depth and with their starters playing heavy minutes on a fast paced game, they would be tired down the stretch. The truth is that on the last minutes of the game, we saw the Spurs bench dominating with Gary Neal, Danny Green and Nando De Colo being amazingly red hot, while Tiago Splitter was the team's big man on the court, with Tim Duncan on the bench. San Antonio shot 11-17 FG from 16-23 feet and 7-18 3pts, while they were amazing on pick and roll ball handler, cuts and transition plays.
San Antonio isn't being a top defensive rebounding team, as they are just grabbing 72.6% of the rebounds on their own board, while allowing their opponents to easily score in offensive rebound plays with 1.19 PPP (points per possession allowed)! They will be facing a Lakers team that is #1 on the league on offensive rebound rate with 35.4%, so they will have a considerable edge over the Spurs in here. San Antonio's game plan for tonight will be similar to the one they had in Portland, as the Lakers have no depth on the bench, so the Spurs will speed up the pace in order to burn out the Lakers' starting lineup and then outplay them with their superior depth, besides avoiding playing a half court game against a team that has a clear size and rebounding edge like the Lakers have over them.
On these two games without Mike Brown, the Lakers barely had pick and roll ball handler plays with just 7.0 and 4.6% volume! The team without Steve Nash simply doesn't have this ability and the Lakers aren't messing around. Their offense is now resumed to post ups (+20% volume), spot ups (+20% volume), offensive rebounds (+10% volume) and transitions (+10% volume). On their last game against the Kings, who were playing without the suspended DeMarcus Cousins, the Lakers frontcourt dominated with Dwight Howard scoring 23 points and grabbing 18 rebounds, while Pau Gasol scored 18 points on a 50% shooting night. The Lakers showed a better offensive flow, even though their second unit was terrible as usual, with only Jordan Hill looking like a legit NBA player.
The Lakers are #4 in the league on PPP on post up plays and even though the Spurs have Tim Duncan and Tiago Splitter, they will struggle on the PF position, especially on defending Pau Gasol. San Antonio may be #9 in the league in defending post up plays, but look at the teams they have faced:
New Orleans - 0.79 PPP (without enough volume to be classified)
Oklahoma City - 0.83 PPP #12
Utah - 0.74 PPP #24
Indiana - 0.90 PPP #6
LA Clippers 0.94 #3
Sacramento 0.72 #25
Portland 0.87 #7
San Antonio faced three teams that are currently on the top 10 of post ups efficiency and in two of those three games they allowed 106 and 109 points! On the other hand, the Lakers' defense looked to be improved over the last four games, but I don't believe in that, as they faced Detroit, Utah, Golden State and Sacramento, four teams who are currently ranked #26, #11, #25 and #29 on my offensive rating ranking. Of course the Lakers had good defensive performances in those games, but they faced three of the worst offenses in the league! Now against a Spurs' offense that is #2 on pick and roll ball handler, #5 on post ups, #7 on pick and roll roll man, #7 on spot ups, #4 on off screens, #8 on cuts and #16 on transitions, I believe the Lakers will struggle on defense tonight, especially on defending pick and roll ball handler and transition plays, as the Lakers' defense is just ranked #28 and #23 in defending these two kind of plays respectively. This is mostly due to the fact that Dwight Howard is still far from being at 100%, something that is making him be very slow on rotations and this will surely be exploited by Gregg Popovich tonight.
San Antonio will torch the Lakers tonight with pick and rolls via their speedy guards and I don't believe the Lakers' defense will be able to limit them on a fast paced game. On the other hand, the Lakers will have a clear frontcourt edge, with a clear edge on offensive rebounding and I also expect them to have a good offensive game. Therefore, I came up with a totals line of 203 points in here, high enough for me to take the Over in here on a Triple Dime Play!
Pick: 5 units (Triple Dime Play) on 511/512 Over 194,5 @ -110 / 1.91 on 5Dimes
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