NBA Free Premium Play 03/29: Oklahoma City Thunder @ Minnesota Timberwolves

Oklahoma City  at Minnesota

NBA - 861 Oklahoma City Thunder @ 862 Minnesota Timberwolves Projected Line: 206 points There are no doubts that Minnesota's offense is currently on their best run of the season and even though they have been playing without Kevin Love, the Wolves had offensive ratings of 119.96, 108.23, 120.83 and 112.64 on their last four games! You can see that they are playing great offense by just looking at their recent assists numbers: 28, 27, 27, 26 and 23 assists on their last five games! This offensive improvement is the result of their guards being in great form right now, especially Ricky Rubio. Also with Nikola Pekovic and Andrei Kirilenko back from injuries, the Wolves have now some inside scoring punch as well. The Wolves are playing at a faster tempo than they were earlier on the season, they are gambling on the defensive end in order to create turnovers and then pound their opponents with quick transition plays. This is why the Wolves are averaging 13.6 fast break points per game over their last 10 games, while their season average is just 11.9! Minnesota will be a tough test for a Thunder's defense that has been amazing on their last four games with an average defensive rating of 91.0! That's some awesome numbers, but I believe they are overrated if we look at Oklahoma City's recent opponents and their spots, while I don't believe that the Thunder's mindset for tonight will be to try to perform a defensive shutdown to the Wolves. In those four games, Oklahoma City faced Memphis in a pure half court battle, in a typical grind out contest involving the Grizzlies. Also note that Oklahoma City was on a back to back spot at the time, after having had another tough battle against Denver in the night before. Then, the Thunder had to travel to face a depleted Magic team that had no talent to score against them. Finally, on their last two games, they played Portland, who was playing their last game of a road trip, while they were also playing their fifth game in seven days, and Washington who was also in a bad spot and had John Wall super tired after playing 45 minutes against Memphis on his team's previous game. The Wolves are rested for tonight's game, they will play at home, so the Thunder will be finally facing an opponent that isn't dead tired or shorthanded! On the other side, as good as the Wolves's offense has been playing, their defense is just flat terrible right now! They are constantly using undersized lineups and their perimeter players can't stop their opposing guards to dribble past them! Therefore, I expect a big game from Russell Westbrook tonight. Minnesota has been able to stop poor offensive teams like Phoenix or Detroit, but when they face decent offensive teams, their defensive struggles are quickly exposed. This is why the Lakers scored 120 points against them, while Chicago, Sacramento, Houston and Indiana also had recently good offensive performances against them with 104, 101, 108 and 107 points scored. On the last game between these two teams, played in Oklahoma City, the game ended with 238 points scored, in a battle where both teams scored more than 20 fast break points each! I expect something similar to happen in tonight's game and so, I'll be taking the Over in here. Pick: 3 units (Single Dime Play) on 861/862 Over 202 @ -110 / 1.91 on Bookmaker