NBA - 531 Orlando Magic @ 532 Indiana Pacers
Projected Line: Indiana by 8 points
Indiana had their expected bounce back win against Cleveland last night. I took the Pacers yesterday as I knew that Cleveland was a good matchup for Indiana due to their poor interior defense and their offense without Kyrie Irving would be stopped by Indiana's fired up defense. The Cavaliers were also on a poor physical spot with a long trip after back to back games at Dallas and San Antonio.
Indiana will play tonight their fourth game in five nights. The spot isn't easy, as all these four games required some travelling as well. This will be the third time this season that Indiana is on this kind of spot and if on the first game, they won at New Orleans by 81-75, on the second game they actually lost at Orlando by 86-97! The common denominator of these two games was indeed a poor offensive performances, with 98.2 and 96.1 offensive ratings, while shooting a combined of 6-34 3pts!
Eventually, Indiana got revenge for this loss at Orlando with a 115-86 home win against the Magic, where they had great numbers in both defense (39% FG allowed and 21 turnovers forced) and offense (52% FG and 11-19 3pts). Note that the Pacers were on a good spot on that game, as they had 1 day off to rest and they were just playing their second game in five days. On the other hand, Orlando was playing their fourth game in six days and they were coming from a one-point loss at Miami on the night before.
As incredible as it may look at first sight, Orlando's offense isn't a good matchup for Indiana's #1 ranked defense. This is due to the fact that the Magic run a ton on pick and roll ball handler plays with both Jameer Nelson and Arron Afflalo. The Pacers's defense is just average on this area, while at the same time Orlando takes a ton of the worst possible shots (16-23 feet), where they are #11 in the league with 39.5% FG. The Pacers's defense is built to let the opponents shoot from that distance because their focus is to shutdown their opponents at the rim and at the 3pts line.
Even though we are in front of a losing team, Orlando has been very competitive lately, as they lost three ballgames against the Lakers, Oklahoma City and Milwaukee. On their last game, they couldn't stop Milwaukee's long range shooting on the second half and especially Monta Ellis who was ridiculously good down the stretch with 25 points scored only in the fourth quarter. Indiana has been struggling on offense on the second night of a back to back, so I really expect Orlando to be competitive tonight. Therefore, I'll be taking the Magic in here.
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