NBA Free Premium Play 04/24: Atlanta Hawks @ Indiana Pacers

Atlanta  at Indiana

NBA - 729 Atlanta Hawks @ 730 Indiana Pacers Projected Line: 191 points Indiana comfortably won Game 1 of this season due to two tremendous edges: rebounding (60% rebound rate) and free throws (34 FTA vs 14 FTA, with Paul George shooting 17-18 FT). Of course I expect a bigger effort from the Hawks to try to limit these two key factors, but this domination from Indiana on these two areas will be inevitable, as we are talking about a team that has a tremendous size advantage over Atlanta and that they will continue using that throughout this series. The Hawks were never a good rebounding team during the regular season or had a nice FT/rate numbers, so they will have to live with these two edges during this series. Atlanta had a nice start of the game by using their superior speed as a weapon through Jeff Teague and Devin Harris. The Hawks managed to generate plenty of good looks against Indiana and it wasn't surprising that they shot 50% FG and 41% 3pts during the game, as they had great looks, they pushed the ball and I expect the same to happen tonight. The focus of Atlanta's practice was on executing better on both ends and playing with pace. Coach Larry Drew said the Hawks did well early on when they jumped out to the early lead, with dictating the pace, but then they got too stagnant. "We gotta run more. At the beginning of the game I thought our tempo was really good. We were really running to attack and then offensively we were running our sets with pace. When we run it with pace, we get good ball movement. When we started isolating, we got into a situation where we got stagnant isolating, standing around and started taking bad shots. That led to them running. I told our guys, a bad shot is just as good as a turnover. Again, this is playoff basketball, you have to do the things that are going to give you an advantage and do the things you feel you are good with. I feel we are good when we run and when we move the basketball because we become hard to defend because we are less predictable." The key factor in Game 1 was Al Horford playing just 28 minutes due to foul trouble. He committed his second PF with 5:29 left in the first half and coach Drew panicked and removed him from the court for the rest of the half. This is a persistent issue with some coaches, but Larry Drew might be the league's top offender, with Al Horford as the victim. It makes no sense on so many levels! Horford isn't remotely foul prone, as he averaged 2.2 per game while playing 37 minutes a night this season. On the other side, I liked to see Indiana not playing half court sets exclusively on offense, where their size edge is tremendous. They also pushed the pace and score in transition. Atlanta scored 14 fast break points, but Indiana responded them with 12 fast break points on their own! Of course, Atlanta will put their focus in stopping Paul George and that will free up more space down low for David West and Roy Hibbert. Therefore, I expect another high scoring game tonight and so, I'll be taking the Over in here. Pick: 3 units (Single Dime Play) on 729/730 Over 186,5 @ -110 / 1.91 on Bookmaker