NBA - 735 Chicago Bulls @ 736 Miami Heat
Projected Line: 177 points
The Game 3 of this series had a super slow pace of 83.6, more appropriate to Chicago's style, who managed to limit Miami's transition points, but the Heat's halfcourt offense was tremendous! They were a bit helped by the referees, but everything went great for Miami, even with Lebron James having a subpar game. The Bulls also limited Miami to 13-21 FG at the rim, so Miami's damage came from an area where it's tougher to shoot: 10-22 FG from 16-23 feet! The difference was that Chicago was competitive because they were hitting all the contested shots with 6-14 FG from 16-23 feet, while also making 7+9+7 treys!
What happened on Game 4 was a brutal regression of the Bulls, who were unable to keep making those shots, with Nate Robinson shooting 0-12 FG! Coach Tom Thibodeau was so desperate for offense that he played Rip Hamilton 22 minutes, who hadn’t seen the floor since Game 6 of the Brooklyn series, in which he played a total of ten minutes. So Rip Hamilton played 22 minutes in a single game after playing ten minutes in a seven game series which included a triple overtime game. The weirdest part about it: Rip ended up as the Bulls’ third leading scorer.
I believe tonight's game will have a similar slow pace that Game 3 and 4 had. Chicago's defense has been doing a good job in limiting easy points down low since Joakim Noah got back into playing major minutes and this should happen tonight as well. So, the Heat will have to keep making long range shots if they want to have a decent offensive game tonight. On the other side, it will be tough for the Bulls to repeat such terrible offensive performance from Game 4, but the truth is that Miami's defense pressures very well the ball handler and Chicago doesn't have a good guard that can give them a nice offensive outcome. So, Chicago needs to crush the boards, but even on that they can't take a lot of risks, as they can get super exposed on their transition defense if they do that.
With just 1 day off to prepare tonight's game, I believe this will be a slow paced contest, with both defenses dominating. Therefore, I'll be taking the Under in here.
Pick: 3 units (Single Dime Play) on 735/736 Under 181 @ -110 / 1.91 on Bookmaker
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