NBA - 503 Sacramento Kings @ 504 Indiana Pacers
Projected Lines: 186 points | Indiana by 5 points
We are in front of two teams that will play their 3rd game in 4 days and that had the same problem in the first two games: a bad offense! Indiana is coming from a surprising loss at Charlotte yesterday, in a game where the Bobcats' head coach was excellent on his first game as a NBA coach: he used fullcourt pressure plus two kinds of zone defense, something that made Indiana look clueless on offense! The Pacers also don't have good ball movement and against this zone defense, they ended up committing a lot of turnovers. They weren't ready for that and they aren't indeed good at passing the ball. Gerald Green had more FG attempts than a player like Roy Hibbert, whose presence was barely felt in last night's game. Every time Indiana was able to pass the ball, they were wide open, but they just hot 7-26 (27%) 3pts! This lack of offensive flow was also expected: George Hill is still far from his best, Danny Granger is out with an injury, while Paul George seems to be winning space on the team's offense over Roy Hibbert, who seems to be now a secondary option on offense. Only David West seems to be in good form on the Pacers offense right now.
On defense, Indiana continues to be a top team, with a very physical and powerful frontcourt. Charlotte struggled in scoring near the basket against the Pacers big frontcourt and they scored just 24 points in the paint. The Bobcats decided to attack in transition, in order to get Indiana distracted and that resulted in 21 fast break points. That was enough due to Indiana's terrible offensive flow like I've mentioned before that saw them cutting the lead to just one point with 2:00 to go, just to not being able to score a single point in their last five possessions of the game.
So, the current line of 8.5 points for the struggling offense of the Pacers seems too much for a team that is basically similar to them...
Sacramento had a lot of problems with fouls on their first two games of the season. Due to this, DeMarcus Cousins played just 25 minutes last night and that resulted in Sacramento getting badly outrebounded by Chicago and Minnesota, when the Kings are generally a top rebounding team. Coach Keith Smart isn't happy with this and he ended up using 12 players on last night's rotation, something that left the team with no continuity on the floor whatsoever. The good news for today is that with that, the team is relatively fresh for today. Minnesota was the best defensive team on the preseason and it was shown last night that it wasn't a fluke.
What I've been enjoying about the Kings this season is their bigger physical ability and good fighting spirit. Even though they played poorly in the first half, Sacramento had a 17-4 run to start the third quarter, they led by 4 points and the Wolves were suddenly on their heels. However, DeMarcus Cousins picked up his 5th foul with the result at 58-54 for the Kings and Sacramento allowed a comeback from the Wolves.
I expect tonight's game to be very physical, as that's the style of both teams. Both Indiana and Sacramento have been playing solid defense, while their struggles are evident on offense with a lack of ball movement and offensive flow. On this kind of scenario, a 8.5 points line for Indiana is just too much, as I expect a tough battle low scoring game in here. Therefore, I'll be taking both Sacramento and the Under tonight.
Pick: 3 units (Single Dime Play) on 503/504 Under 191 @ -110 / 1.91 on Bookmaker
Pick: 3 units (Single Dime Play) on 503 Sacramento Kings (+8.5) @ -110 / 1.91 on Bookmaker
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