NBA Free Premium Play 02/20: Philadelphia 76ers @ Minnesota Timberwolves

Philadelphia  at Minnesota

NBA - 709 Philadelphia 76ers @ 710 Minnesota Timberwolves Projected Line: 182 points The All Star Break allowed Andrei Kirilenko to recover physically and so, the Timberwolves will have their best defensive player back in the lineup, something that will give some stability to their perimeter defense, where they have been struggling. Minnesota will have a good offensive edge tonight with Nikola Pekovic down low, but Philadelphia's gameplan for tonight will be exactly the same that they used in the previous game between these two teams, where the Sixers packed the paint to protect themselves from Pekovic (and also Love, who was still playing at the time). This is a good tactic to have against the Wolves because they are the worst 3pts team in the league. Philadelphia only allowed Minnesota to score 32 points in the paint and 7 offensive boards, while forcing the Wolves to attempt 25 treys. The problem for Philadelphia that night was that Minnesota surprisingly shot 13-25 3pts! Their outside shooting performance was so surprising that in the following three games, the Wolves shot just 12-52 (23%) 3pts! For tonight, Philadelphia's defense will use the same tactics and I really don't believe Minnesota will have the good outside shooting game that they had in the first game, as they shot just 18-65 (27.7%) 3pts on their last four games and they have really no good outside shooters, especially with Kevin Love injured. On the other hand, Philadelphia's offense is limited without Thaddeus Young and even though they have Jrue Holiday and Evan Turner to create some danger, Minnesota has Ricky Rubio to defend Jrue Holiday and possibly Andrei Kirilenko to guard Evan Turner, so Philadelphia should struggle on offense tonight, as they don't have a lot of offensive skilled players and the ones that they have will be well defended tonight. Philadelphia is averaging just an offensive rating of 98.9 over their last 8 games and with them playing at a super slow pace, we can't really expect them to score a considerable number of points on their games. I expect another super low scoring game involving the Sixers tonight and so, I'll be taking the Under in here. Pick: 3 units (Single Dime Play) on 709/710 Under 186,5 @ -110 / 1.91 on 5Dimes