NBA - 815 Minnesota Timberwolves @ 816 Oklahoma City Thunder
Projected Line: 198 points
***DOUBLE DIME PLAY***
Oklahoma City lost three games in a row for the first time this season. They have been committing a lot of turnovers on offense, but they still have nice offensive games. Their main problem has been their terrible defense, as they had defensive ratings of 115.1, 116.1 and 116.5 on their last three games! This is the first time they have such a poor defensive sequence of games, as everytime they had allowed an offensive rating of over 115 to their opponents, they would bounce back big time in the following game. While Utah had the merit of using their size edge to execute good post up plays, Miami and Houston are offensive machines. They will now face Minnesota, who will be a much easier opponent to defend.
“We're a defensive team,” Coach Scott Brooks said. “We pride ourselves at that end of the floor.”
Tonight the Thunder have a great opponent to make a great defensive bounce back. Minnesota is coming from a win against Philadelphia, but they also showed their usual problems on offense. They struggled once again on their outside shooting with 5-17 FG from 16-23 feet and 5-13 treys. The Wolves's offensive game only had success down low with Nikola Pekovic, who simply crushed the Sixers's poor interior defense with 9-16 FG, 9-15 FT, 27 points and 18 rebounds in 41 minutes! But when his opponents are Spencer Hawes, Lavoy Allen and Kwame Brown, everything gets easier! Oklahoma City with Kendrick Perkins has other defensive tools that Philadelphis doesn't. If the Thunder are able to defend well Pekovic, then Minnesota will struggle big time on offense! After all, even with this tremendous edge of Pekovic against the Sixers's frontcourt, Minnesota scored just 21+20+18 points in the second, third and fourth quarters, after having scored 35 points in the first quarter!
What will decide this game will be the matchup between the Thunder's offense and the Wolves's defense. Minnesota is coming from three nice defensive games, where they posted defensive ratings of 101.1, 102.6 and 95.31! But they faced non-elite offensive teams in Cleveland, Utah and Philadelphia. With Andrei Kirilenko, they naturally defend much better and on this duel against Oklahoma City, the Russian player will be vital for the Wolves to defend Kevin Durant. Of course he will score his share of points, but Kirilenko should be able to at least limit his offensive production. Therefore, I believe this game will be a relatively low scoring game and so, I'll be taking the Under in here on a Double Dime Play.
Pick: 4 units (Double Dime Play) on 815/816 Under 204 @ -110 / 1.91 on Bookmaker
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