NBA - 703 Los Angeles Clippers @ 704 Philadelphia 76ers
Projected Line: 182 points
The key matchup on the Clippers's game yesterday against the Knicks was between Carmelo Anthony and Blake Griffin, who faced each other on both ends of the floor and it was indeed a nice battle. The Knicks explored well that edge with Carmelo having a monster game, however he did that damage mostly thanks to isolation plays. He was unstoppable with 13-24 FG and 38 points by the end of the third quarter, but thanks to that the Knicks had no offensive flow and they ended the game with just 11 assists, a season low!
The most interesting thing was to watch how the Clippers would play with their roster finally healthy. The good news was that the Clippers's second unit simply dominated the game! They looked as sharp as they were at the start of the season, with Eric Bledsoe and Jamal Crawford back in their familiar roles as the second unit's backcourt. That allowed the LA team to make a 13-0 run from the end of the first quarter through the start of the second quarter. If we look at the +/- team points, we see that Chris Paul ended the game with -6, Blake Griffin with -2, but their second unit players Eric Bledsoe had +20, Jamal Crawford +17, Lamar Odom +15 and Grant Hill +10!
As much as the Clippers had merit in that, they also had an easy matchup while facing Amare Stoudemire as the opposing center! The Clippers's second unit style is more to push the tempo and attack the rim and when the Knicks had Amare as their center to patrol the paint, good news won't happen on this kind of matchups to the NY team! For several moments, I saw Amare Stoudemire, Carmelo Anthony, JR Smith and Jason Kidd playing together and that's a very poor defensive lineup. So, it wasn't a surprise that Amare ended the game with a team's worst -19 on team +/- points, while Tyson Chandler had +9! Think about that: throughout the 31 minutes that Tyson Chandler was on the floor, the Knicks outscored the Clippers by 9 points Finally, a special word for Grant Hill, who played the entire fourth quarter and did a terrific defensive job on Carmelo Anthony! Melo ended the third quarter with 38 points scored, but he got held to just 4 points in the final quarter of the game!
The Clippers will now be playing their third game in four nights, besides being also on a back-to-back spot. This isn't a good spot for them and they are coming from a marquee game against the Knicks yesterday. This is their last game of the road trip, as they will be hosting the Rockets next Wednesday. I believe the Clippers's poor spot will be most noticeable on their offense, as Philadelphia is a good transition defensive team by being #4 in the league with 1.06 PPP for the season and 0.94 PPP on their last 5 games! The Clippers showed a stagnant offense against the Knicks and they only got a good offensive game because of their second unit exposing the Knicks's poor perimeter defense. They won't be as lucky tonight against the Sixers's good transition defense, who will be making this contest a half court game. Philadelphia's defense has been playing decently even without Thaddeus Young. Coach Collins has inserted Lavoy Allen in the lineup and he is a decent defensive player.
On the other hand, Philadelphia's offense is all about Jrue Holiday, but he won't have an easy matchup today against Chris Paul and Eric Bledsoe. Plus the Sixers's offense is way too one-dimensional and so, it's very easy to stop them right now, as shown by a tired Bobcats's defense, who was able to limit the Sixers to 87 points and 41.9% FG on their last game. I expect this game to be a slow paced contest, with both teams struggling in being effective on half court sets, therefore I'll be taking the Under in here.
Pick: 3 units (Single Dime Play) on 703/704 Under 185 @ -110 / 1.91 on Bookmaker
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