Projected Line: Atlanta by 12 points
***DOUBLE DIME PLAY***
On this game, not only Milwaukee is on a terrible spot asking for a major letdown, as they will face a horrible matchup for them! Milwaukee will play their 8th game in just 12 days and they really don't like to win easy! Against the lowly Magic on Sunday afternoon, they had a terrible start of the game and needed a major 4th quarter comeback to win it, with Monta Ellis scoring 25 points on his own on the 4th quarter. However, the fact that the Bucks struggled so much against Orlando forced them to use Monta Ellis for 40 minutes and Brandon Jennings 44 minutes! Last night, in another home game, this time against Portland, the scenario was even worse for Milwaukee. The Blazers were on a back to back spot and they don't have the proper depth to compete in the NBA in such poor spots. Milwaukee was up by 27 points at half time just to allow a comeback to the tired Blazers in the second half, something that once again forced Monta Ellis, Brandon Jennings and Larry Sanders to play at least 40 minutes last night.
The spot is immediately tough for Milwaukee, especially on offense as they attempt a lot of long shots and with tired legs, they struggle in being efficient. This is why Milwaukee is averaging an offensive rating of 105.5 for the season, but just 101.9 on back to back games! Now looking at the matchup between the Hawks's offense and the Bucks's defense, everything gets really tough for Milwaukee. With Ersan Ilyasova likely out once again due to back pain, Samuel Dalembert will start another game tonight and he won't have speed to guard Al Horford.
On the first game played between these two teams earlier on the season, Milwaukee was playing with two days off, while Atlanta was playing a back to back game and also their third contest in four games. Even though the spot was clearly favoring Milwaukee, Atlanta won the game on the road with Al Horford destroying Larry Sanders with 11-22 FG, 23 points, 11 rebounds and 3 assists in 37 minutes! What really makes Sanders struggle in defending Horford is that the fact that the Hawks's center is a good mid-range shooter, as he showed in that game with 5-9 FG from 16-23 feet and Sanders is only comfortable in playing near the basket. Besides the frontcourt edge, Atlanta's transition game will also crush Milwaukee's poor perimeter defense, especially when they use Brandon Jennings, Monta Ellis and J.J. Redick/Mike Dunleavy together on the backcourt. Milwaukee has allowed a ridiculous 1.24 PPP on transition on their last 5 games. 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!
In normal conditions, Atlanta is a super bad matchups for this current Milwaukee's defense, but if we add to this the fact that the Bucks are without Ersan Ilyasova, Luc Mbah a Moute and in a poor physical spot, then Atlanta has all the conditions to have a huge offensive game tonight. The Hawks are coming from a humiliating home loss against Dallas, so they are also in a good bounce back mindset for tonight. There isn't a lot to say about this loss. Atlanta was awesome on offense with 56% FG, 8-21 3pts and with eight players scoring double digits points, but their defense was atrocious with a 136.2 defensive rating! This is the worst defensive game of the Hawks this season! After holding their last five opponents to 27% shooting from 3-point range, Dallas shot 13-27 FG from 16-23 feet and 13-22 3pts on this contest!
"We didn't guard," coach Larry Drew said after the Mavs finished shooting 57.3 percent. "We had no defensive presence whatsoever. I don't care what the strategy was or what the game plan was, if you allow teams to shoot 60 percent you are not going to win."
For today, we can expect Atlanta to be more focused on defense and also in here, the Hawks are a poor matchup for the Bucks, as Atlanta is #3 in the league on pick and roll ball handler defense with 0.73 PPP allowed and #7 in the league on transition defense with 1.10 PPP allowed. These are exactly the two areas where Milwaukee needs to have good numbers in order to have efficient offensive games due to the fact that they have a guard-oriented offense, so they run a lot of pick and rolls. Looking at all of this, I expect Atlanta to pick up an easy win tonight and so, I'll be taking them in here on a Double Dime Play!
Pick: 4 units (Double Dime Play) on 606 Atlanta Hawks (-6) @ -110 / 1.91 on Bookmaker
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