NBA Free Premium Play 03/24: Atlanta Hawks @ Milwaukee Bucks

Atlanta  at Milwaukee

NBA - 701 Atlanta Hawks @ 702 Milwaukee Bucks Projected Line: 206 points Atlanta had one of their meltdowns on their last game against Portland, where they had a good matchup against a tired team, but lost due to a collapse down the stretch. The Hawks had a tremendous edge down low with 19-27 (70.4%) FG at the rim, with their players sharing well the ball, until when Josh Smith decided that he wanted to lead the team's offense down the stretch, but instead of attacking the basket, he settled for long range jump shots and that destroyed Atlanta's offense. Besides that, the Hawks never shot well from the perimeter on that game with just 7-24 3pts. On the other hand, Milwaukee isn't also coming to this game in a good mood, as they are coming from a blowout loss at Indiana, where their offense was completely shutdown by Indiana. It was the second game in a row where Ersan Ilyasova didn't play and Milwaukee's Coach decided once again to use Samuel Dalembert and Larry Sanders as the team's starting frontcourt and that was a poor decision as that lineup left the team with no scoring ability on the frontcourt. Therefore, it was easier for Indiana to focus on defending the Bucks's backcourt, especially when we are talking about a team that is #1 in the league in spot up defense and #3 on 3pts defense! This caused Brandon Jennings to shoot 1-15 FG and J.J. Redick 1-11 FG, for a combined of 2-26 FG! These two teams faced each other at Atlanta a few days ago, but they are now in better offensive spots than they were last Wednesday night. I took the Hawks there on a Top Play as Milwaukee was on a horrible spot. The Bucks were on a second night of a back to back and they were coming from a dogfight against Portland the night before. The result of that was Brandon Jennings, Monta Ellis and Larry Sanders playing over 40 minutes. Samuel Dalembert also started the game against the Hawks and he had an expected poor offensive game with 1-7 FG in 18 minutes! Monta Ellis that was in excellent form couldn't handle the poor spot and shot just 2-14 FG, while the Bucks's overall lack of aggressiveness was evident, as they had just 11 FT attempts throughout the whole game! On the other side, Atlanta took well advantage of the edges they had on offense, especially against the Bucks's poor perimeter defense. Jeff Teague was the team's MVP with 11-19 FG and 11 assists! Both teams had 1 day of rest prior to this game, so I expect both the Hawks and the Bucks to be aggressive today. The matchup favors both offenses, as Atlanta's perimeter defense has been poor lately with 38.4% 3pts allowed (#23 in the league) since the All Star break and 40% FG allowed from 16-23 feet, something that can easily be exposed by Milwaukee's good perimeter shooting. On the other hand, Atlanta's transition offense will be a huge problem for Milwaukee's, who doesn't have a good enough backcourt to stop the dribble penetration from Atlanta's guards. That's something that I had already mentioned on last Wednesday's writeup: "If we take a look at what Milwaukee's defense did against teams that have on their mindset to attack in transition, they allowed 20 fast break points to Dallas, 18 points to Washington and even Orlando scored 18 fast break points against them last Sunday!" Atlanta did exactly what I had predicted by scoring 28 fast break points with 12-20 FG on transitions for 1.41 PPP! I expect a high scoring game today and so, I'll be taking the Over in here. Pick: 3 units (Single Dime Play) on 701/702 Over 202 @ -110 / 1.91 on Bookmaker