NBA - 803 Oklahoma City Thunder @ 804 Los Angeles Lakers
Projected Line: 201 points
***DOUBLE DIME PLAY***
The Lakers are coming from an excellent home win against Utah, where they showed balanced scoring and plenty of hustle plays and some great defense by allowing the Jazz to shoot only 42% FG! The team from LA will face the Thunder for the third time this season, with Oklahoma City having won the first two games. However, both games were played in the pure run and gun era of the Lakers, while on the second game, the Lakers's starting frontcourt was Earl Clark and Robert Sacre! Things will be different today, especially because the Lakers aren't having the same wild run and gun game approach anymore. They have been slowing down their game pace lately and this only favors them, while with Dwight Howard showing more effort and focus, everything gets easier on the defensive end. They have been averaging a pace factor of 90.5 on their last 5 games, while they averaged a pace factor of 95.5 on the 12 games prior to this span! Of course, the Lakers are still a bit turnover prone, but even on this area the Lakers's defense is preventing their opponents from scoring fast break points.
If the Lakers have already this mindset of slowing down the pace and pound down low, then against Oklahoma City this will definitely happen. However, the Lakers won't be able to torch the Thunder with pick and rolls, like they did it against Utah. While the Jazz are #28 on pick and roll ball handler defense with 0.87 PPP allowed, Oklahoma City's defense is simply #1 with 0.68 PPP! It won't be also easy for Dwight Howard to have a good edge down low against Kendrick Perkins, who is a much better defender than Al Jefferson. Oklahoma City is #10 on post up defense and they are #4 on rim defense with 61.2% FG allowed, while Utah is #22!
It's clear that this will be a big test to the Lakers's defense. From what I've watched at the start of their game against Memphis, while Dwight Howard was on the court, and their game against Utah, I really liked the intensity that the LA team showed on defense. Kobe Bryant and Dwight Howard are focused and the players are helping each other much better than previously. Oklahoma City's offense has been sloppy with a lot of turnovers lately with 17, 24, 16, 19 and 20 turnovers on their last 5 games and with Russell Westbrook forcing shots, I believe the Lakers's defense will have a good performance today. I believe in a relatively low scoring game today, therefore, looking at the current totals line, I'll be taking the Under in here on a Double Dime Play!
Pick: 4 units (Double Dime Play) on 803/804 Under 207,5 @ -110 / 1.91 on Betonline
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