NBA - 507 Minnesota Timberwolves @ 508 Sacramento Kings
Projected Line: Minnesota by 3 points
Minnesota is 0-5 on their last five games and they are desperate to win tonight. From these last five losses, I'm going to concentrate just on the last three, as the first two losses were against Charlotte and Golden State, in two games where Minnesota was shorthanded with Nikola Pekovic and Kevin Love. On these last three games, Minnesota had no time to adapt to the fact that Kevin Love was back. He suddenly recovered from his injury against Denver last Wednesday and then they played at Portland last Friday and at Golden State last Saturday. But for this game, they had two days to rest.
On their last three losses against Denver, Portland and Golden State, Minnesota was leading the game in halftime in all three games. Their problem was their poor execution down the stretch, where Minnesota lost focus and the players wanted Kevin Love to step it up and carry the team, when he isn't at 100% to do that right now. Now that they had some days without games, the Wolves finally had a practice and Rick Adelman said after practice that it's clear Love's conditioning, his timing and his shot just aren't back yet and suggested Love's teammates probably deferred to him too much in Saturday's fourth quarter when they should have moved the ball better.
I expect Minnesota to be better prepared for tonight. On offense, their problems were clear. On defense, their opponents against Kevin Love and Nikola Pekovic shoot very little from near the basket with just 24, 21 and 19 FG attempts at the rim on the Wolves' last three games. They will face Sacramento tonight, a team that is coming from a nice home win against Utah, where they dominated down low with 22-28 (79%) FG at the rim! Their improved offense lately is related to their improved efficiency on shooting down low, as they have shot 76-106 (72%) FG at the rim on their last four games. But against this new defensive structure with Nikola Pekovic, Kevin Love and Andrei Kirilenko, I believe Sacramento will struggle to score on the inside today, something that will immediately cause a lot of problems on Sacramento's offense.
The Kings are the worst defensive rebounding team in the league with a defensive rebound rate of just 69.1% and they are an easy target for Minnesota's great offensive rebounding skills, a team that has grabbed 17, 17 and 11 offensive rebounds in their last three games, where Kevin Love has already played. With Minnesota being hungry tonight to get the win and with a very favorable matchup for them, I expect the Wolves to finally get back to the winning road tonight and so, I'll be taking them in here.
Pick: 3 units (Single Dime Play) on 507 Minnesota Timberwolves (+1) @ -110 / 1.91 on Bookmaker
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