NBA - 801 Los Angeles Lakers @ 802 Toronto Raptors
Projected Line: LA Lakers by 8 points | 200 points
Projected Line: LA Lakers by 8 points | 200 points
The Lakers have been playing better lately since they lost against Oklahoma City. It's not like they are a top powerhouse out of nowhere, who deserve to be double digits favorites on the road. Still, the LA team is a tough matchup for Toronto and they should get a comfortable win today. The Lakers have the right tools to expose Toronto's biggest problem: their lack of depth on the frontcourt. The Raptors pretty much only have Amir Johnson and Ed Davis to play consistently on the frontcourt, with Aaron Gray giving 10/15 minutes maximum to the team. So, everytime Toronto faces a team with a powerful frontcourt, they heavily struggle like they did when they got dominated at home against Sacramento, with a big game from DeMarcus Cousins.
“This is why Brooklyn's frontcourt pounded them with Brook Lopez shooting 6-12 FG and 10-10 FT and Andray Blatche shooting 7-10 FG, while on this last game against the Bulls, Carlos Boozer had a monster game with 16-24 FG and 36 points.”
Even against a team like the Sixers that doesn't have a lot of power down low, we had Thaddeus Young shooting 13-19 FG, Lavoy Allen 6-9 FG and Spencer Hawes 5-8 FG. No wonder that Toronto is #27 in the league on post up defense by allowing 0.90 PPP to their opponents. Dwight Howard is still far from their best, but he will still dominate this poor Raptors's frontcourt. Amir Johnson has been playing with an ankle injury and after an overtime game at Philadelphia, where he played 47 minutes and Ed Davis 42 minutes, I don't expect Toronto's frontcourt to be physically at 100% today. With the Lakers having a clear edge down low, everything will be easier for them on offense. On the other hand, we saw that the Lakers struggled once again with turnovers on their last game and of course, they got exposed by Miami's transition plays. However, Toronto doesn't have explosive wings that can make the Lakers struggle on their ball handling.
The Lakers got torched on defense by Lebron James's dribble penetrations on their last game, but Toronto doesn't have players to do that. The Raptors is coming from back to back games on overtime and even though they will come fired up for this contest, the Lakers will have a mental edge and especially a huge frontcourt edge on this game, so I expect them to have an easy win today,
Pick: 3 units (Single Dime Play) on 801 Los Angeles Lakers (-4.5) @ -110 / 1.91 on 5 Dimes
ADDED PLAY:
Pick: 3 units (Single Dime Play) on 801/802 Under 204 @ -110 / 1.91 on Bookmaker
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