Projected Line: 178 points
We have tonight the only Game 7 of the first round of the playoffs this season between Brooklyn and Chicago. I believe this will be a nervous game, while being a quite physical one and with both defenses winning the battle over the opposing offenses. The last three games of this series were all high scoring games. Note that the pace of the games continued being quite slow, but the offensive ratings were incredible and this is why so many points were scored. However, for tonight's game, I believe the slow pace will happen once again tonight, but this time offenses will struggle a bit.
The Game 6 was already a good indicator of that, as while we had 114 points scored during the first half, the second half had just 73 points. Both teams had two days off to rest between the Game 5 and 6 and with fresh legs, both offenses were super sharp in the first half, especially Joe Johnson who scored 13 points and looked decent while moving around- The problem for him was on the second half where he had 4 points in the 3rd quarter and 0 points in the 4th quarter! After the game, he seemed completely worn out and banged up, so I don't believe he has fully recovered with just 1 day off. Joakim Noah's health seems improved right now and he played 43 minutes in Game 6. These are bad news for Brook Lopez, who will have more problems to score against him. He is coming from 7-18 FG and 3 rebounds in Game 6, far from the dominant numbers he had been having throughout this series.
Chicago had several banged up players on Game 6 like Nate Robinson and Taj Gibson, besides being without Luol Deng and Kirk Hinrich. However, the Bulls's defense was still impeccable during the second half. Even though the Bulls are still far from being 100% healthy, their defensive pride is huge and so, I expect them to have another good defensive performance tonight. Their problem is that their offense is going to struggle. Brooklyn isn't committing turnovers and they are coming back quickly to defense. This is why the Bulls scored just 9 and 8 fast break points on the last two games of the series. Besides some good numbers from Carlos Boozer, we are dealing with a team that is shooting an absurd number of 16-23 feet jumpers. They were being efficient in doing that, but they wouldn't be able to keep doing that forever and they struggled on Game 6 with just 6-26 FG! We are dealing with a team that used their starters for 42, 43, 46, 48 and 33 minutes on Game 6! Carlos Boozer played just 33 minutes because he was in foul trouble or he would also have played more than 40 minutes. Chicago with tired legs won't have the physical form to hit their jumpers and so, they will have to compensate once again on defense.
Therefore, I expect a super low scoring game in here tonight and so, I'll be taking the Under on this contest.
Pick: 3 units (Single Dime Play) on 555/556 Under 182 @ -110 / 1.91 on Bovada
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