NBA - 703 Charlotte Bobcats @ 704 Miami Heat
Projected Line: Miami by 21 points
We have Miami in here on a much better spot than the ones they've been having lately. They played a brutal game at Boston, then another brutal game at Cleveland, just to comeback home to face the lowly Pistons on a poor spot. This time, they had 1 day off to rest and this is a home-home spot for them, so the Heat should be much fresher physically than they were in their previous games. The only way teams have been competitive against Miami has been by dominating them on the boards, where the Heat have been struggling by grabbing just 42.54%, 28.45%, 56.76%, 44.74% and 36.91% of the boards on their last five games. The only game where they won the boards battle was at Boston, on the only game where the Heat actually faced a tough opponent and where they took advantage of the Celtics's undersized lineup to outrebound them. Even though they had an excuse due to a poor spot, Miami was ridiculous on rebounding against Detroit by getting outrebounded by 4-18 on the offensive glass by Detroit, while Greg Monroe had a huge game with 10-19 FG, 23 points, 15 rebounds and 6 assists. This won't happen today against Charlotte, as the Bobcats are a poor offensive rebounding team with just a 24.12% offensive rebound rate since the All Star break. Besides that, Charlotte lacks any skilled big man who can pound Miami down low like Greg Monroe did it last Friday night.
So, it will be up to Charlotte's guards to do any kind of damage to keep their team remotely competitive tonight. However, the Bobcats played a ballgame at home against Detroit, where Kemba Walker made a big effort with 10-20 FG in 37 minutes. Therefore, it will be tough to ask for the Bobcats's guards to have a big game tonight, especially when they depend a lot from their pick and roll ball handler plays and transitions to be effective and Miami's defense is #3 in the league in both areas! As Miami knows that they won't need to be worrying with Charlotte's frontcourt that lacks any kind of offensive skills, the Heat will put a lot of pressure on the ball handlers, something that will force a lot of turnovers that will result in easy transition dunks for Miami.
On the other side, there isn't a lot to be talked about the matchup between Miami's offense and Charlotte's defense. The Bobcats are horrible in defending corner treys and they can easily be caught out of the position if they face teams will good ball movement and so, Shane Battier and Ray Allen will have several opportunities tonight to hit their usual corner treys. Chris Bosh is coming from a poor game against Detroit, where he had no legs to play well and ended the game with 1-7 FG! He will certainly be fired up tonight to have a personal bounce back game. Charlotte was actually competitive on the last game between these two teams, however Miami was in one of their worst spots of the season, as they had played in Toronto the day before and they decided to stay in Canada to watch the Superbowl that night. They only cameback home already in the day of their game against the Bobcats, so they weren't really ready to play that game. The result of that was Miami having a terrible shooting game with 1-12 3pts and even 16-24 (66.7%) FT! Today things are exactly the opposite, with Miami being rested and Charlotte being on a back to back spot. Therefore, I expect a massive blowout win for the Heat today and so, I'll be taking them in here.
Pick: 3 units (Single Dime Play) on 704 Miami Heat (-17) @ -110 / 1.91 on Bookmaker
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