NBA Free Premium Play 01/03: Portland Trailblazers @ Oklahoma City Thunder

Portland  at Oklahoma City

NBA - 503 Portland Trailblazers @ 504 Oklahoma City Thunder Projected line: 198 Oklahoma City had a complete no show yesterday, with a terrible offensive game, completely off sync. They seem to be too relaxed and the spot of being 5-0 vs DAL, who had they defeated previously this season and was on a back to back ended up being a huge trap for them. So tonight, I expect a bounce back for the Thunder and their aggressiveness will surely be back! Portland has been playing at a super fast pace, especially for a team who was playing with a pace on the low 80's last season! Already this season, they have played games at a pace of 98, 91, 102(!) and 93! With this change of pace, Portland is now very prone to commit turnovers, currently having a TO/rate of 15.20%. Curiously, Oklahoma City has also been having tremendous struggles with turnovers, with a TO/rate of 17%, the league's worst mark! Russell Westbrook has been a disaster and this combination of turnovers will originate a lot of chances for both teams to score in the transition, especially considering we are talking about two athletic teams! Portland is coming from a loss at LAC, where they didn't score 100 points or more, as the Trailblazers could only score 5 fast break points, with Gerald Wallace scoring 0 points, on a 0-5 FG night! However, the turnovers of the Thunder will allow an offensive bounce back from Portland and Wallace individually! He played twice against Oklahoma City last season already in Portland and in one of the games he had 40pts 16-28 FG and 7 boards, while in the other game, he had 13pts, 6reb, 3ast and 2stl! So, we can definitely expect a bounce back from Gerald Wallace tonight! The Blazers are also a great offensive rebounding team, so Portland should be able to score 2nd chance points on this game. Their problems on the offense has been their lack of consistency on the outside, but the combination of the transitions and the off rebounds will be quite relevant on this matchup. On the other side, the Thunder continue to be an offensive machine based on two main factors: free throws and fast break points! They are currently averaging 16.8 FB/game (5th in the league) and they are scoring 1.26 PPP (points per possession with a volume of 14.2% on transition plays. They are 2nd in the league in FT/rate with 38.5%. These are all signs of the kind of offense we are talking about. Looking at their poor loss yesterday, we can expect more than 25 FT attempts for Oklahoma City tonight. Already on the four games between these two teams last season, Oklahoma City had 26, 26, 29 and 23 FT attempts, with Portland being a super slow paced team at the time. Now looking at the new pace that Portland is playing and the aggressiveness, athleticism and turnover problems of both teams, I've projected a line of 198 for this contest, which makes me take the over on this contest. Pick: 3 units (Single Dime Play) on 503/504 Over 194 @ -110 / 1.91 on 5Dimes