NBA - 801 Minnesota Timberwolves @ 802 Washington Wizards
Projected line: Washington by 2 points
***SPLIT THE WAGER***
Washington has a good chance of winning their first game of the season today. Minnesota's offense only exists right now via Ricky Rubio's P&R plays, when he makes the right passes. Besides this, all the rest doesn't exist as Barea was a huge X factor on the team's offense, as he knows how to improvise and find open spaces for himself and for his teammates. But with him banged up due to injury, the Wolves are clearly struggling. On a rare early game, especially for a Western conference team like Minnesota, things will only get worse for them, as they had literally no time to prepare for this game.
On the other side, Washington isn't exactly on a much better position. However, they have John Wall who can accelarate the game very well and he will have an edge over Ricky Rubio, as the Spanish PG isn't used to face a player with Wall's speed. Then, the Wizards have in Rashard Lewis and Nick Young two much better shooters than the whole Wolves roster, excluding Kevin Love! The X factor of this game will be the matchup between Kevin Love vs JaVale McGee and Andray Blatche! Both players of the Wizards frontcourt did quite good against the Knicks, but we all know how terrible is the Knicks defense! However, I still expect the Wizards frontcourt to be at least decent today.
Minnesota's offense uses mostly P&R Ball Handler plays (#4 in the league with 0.94 PPP) and of course, offensive rebounds (#6 with 1.14 PPP), but they are clearly subpar on everything else! I expect the Wizards to be able to stop their P&R Ball Handler plays, as they are #9 in stopping this kind of plays by allowing just 0.76 PPP! Washington is just #20 on def rebounds, but with their favourable spot today and sense of urgency, I expect the Wizards to be able to do better than their average shows on this department. In terms of Washington's offense, the only thing they really do well is transitions with 1.18 PPP and with Minnesota allowing 1.28 PPP, we can expect a lot of success from the Wizards on this kind of play today.
Even though Washington has been poor this season, the spot of an early game clearly favors them over Minnesota and their sense of urgency due to being the only winless team in the league right now will make them have more motivation and hustle than usual, which in my opinion will result on a good performance from them today. That should be enough to beat a Wolves team, who seems completely lost on offense right now without Barea by being too dependent on what Ricky Rubio can do, who has a tough matchup today against John Wall. Therefore, my projections point to Washington being a 2 points favorite for this contest and looking at the current lines, we have enough edge to take the Wizards today. Split the wager.
Pick: 1 unit on 802 Washington Wizards ML @ +115 / 2.15 on Bookmaker
Pick: 2 units on 802 Washington Wizards (+2) @ -110 / 1.91 on Bookmaker
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