NBA - 715 Chicago Bulls @ 716 Phoenix Suns
Projected Line: Chicago by 6 points
Phoenix is coming from a home win against Denver, where they found the Nuggets on a complete flat spot, after coming from a double overtime win at Golden State two nights before. Denver had a good early start and things were so easy for them that they relaxed and never got back to their focused mindset for the remainder of the game. Even though Denver scored easily on transitions and Kenneth Faried dominated on the frontcourt, the truth is that the Suns had a better effort, dominated the boards and committed less turnovers, while the Nuggets' lack of effort on defense also helped Phoenix, with Goran Dragic dominating Ty Lawson the whole game. This offensive domination allowed the Suns to outscore Denver, as the Suns' defense couldn't just stop the Nuggets.
Chicago is coming from a home loss against Boston, in a very good game between two good teams. Boston was able to outplay Chicago mostly due to their excellent perimeter shooting, with Rajon Rondo outplaying Nate Robinson. Joakim Noah looked very good offensively once again with smart shooting and good passing, while being able to make a small comeback down the stretch, as they held the Celtics to 19 points and 35% FG in the fourth quarter, which included a scoreless stretch of over five minutes! The Bulls played a good game against the Celtics, but Boston was just too good on a excellent performance from them.
The Bulls will now play tonight in Phoenix and this is a very good matchup for Chicago. Phoenix has in offensive rebounding one of their main strengths (#7 with 29.6% on offensive rebound rate), besides committing a low number of turnovers. The problem is that Chicago is one of the best defensive rebounding teams in the league (#4 in the league) and on a bounce back spot, they should be able to avoid the Suns to have a lot of second chance points. Phoenix would need to shoot extremely well to be able to have a decent offensive game against the good Bulls defense, especially with Kirk Hinrich likely to comeback to the starting lineup tonight.
Phoenix would really need a good offensive game tonight to hang with Chicago, as they are just terrible on defense. They are #28 in defensive efficiency, #27 in defending the paint and this should be a game where the Bulls offense pick apart the opponent thanks to their ball movement that allows them to create easy chances to score. Phoenix is dead last in the league in defedning spot ups with 1.16 PPP allowed and with Chicago coming from a good game against Boston, I expect the Bulls to also pound them on this department. I expect Chicago to limit Phoenix's offense, while the Bulls should have a good offensive game in here, therefore I expect Chicago to have an easy win and so, I'll be taking them in here.
Pick: 3 units (Single Dime Play) on 715 Chicago Bulls (-2,5) @ -110 / 1.91 on Bookmaker
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