NBA - 515 Cleveland Cavaliers @ 516 Los Angeles Clippers
Projected Line: LA Clippers by 14 points
Even though Kyrie Irving is playing great and Anderson Varejao is dominating the boards battles, the truth is that Cleveland has some fatal flows that the Clippers will take advantage to make this game a lopsided one. After two nice wins against Memphis and the Lakers, the Clippers simply relaxed at home against the Warriors without Andrew Bogut and Brandon Rush, allowing Golden State to get the win on a supposedly easy game for the LA team. Their coach Vinny Del Negro confirmed that:
"We got outworked tonight, there’s no question about it. If you look at the statistics, they had 16 offensive rebounds. They out-rebounded us, got more shots. We got to the free throw line plenty. It was a physical game".
Today it's bounce back time for the Clippers and the lowly Cavaliers will be the victim!
Cleveland's offense is still a work in progress: a limited frontcourt and just Anderson Varejao is able to be productive, but without creating his own shots, just getting the offensive rebounds and pick and roll plays with Kyrie Irving! The Cavaliers' offense is perimeter baded and so, we are in front of a jump shooting team. In fact, on their game against Milwaukee, they attempted 38 FG from more than 16 feet away from the basket! The problem is that they don't have a good ball movement, with just 19 assists on the 39 FG shots they made against the Bucks: an assist rate of just 48.7%! With such pressure on the ball handlers, Cleveland has also been turnover prone, with 21, 17 and 16 turnovers on their first three games of the season!
On defense, Cleveland hasn't been able to stop teams from scoring easy transition points, as they allowed 13, 15 and 15 fast break points to their opponents! Anderson Varejao can't do it all alone on his own down low and the Cavaliers don't have a good interior defense. In my opinion, Cleveland will have a lot of problems this season against "big teams" with a powerful frontcourt. That's why they have already been crushed at home by 86-115 against Chicago! The Clippers is another team who can pound them down low and that's likely to happen, especially with them in bounce back mode!
Cleveland's offense depends from what Kyrie Irving can do, but he will have Chris Paul and Eric Bledsoe defending him, two players who are excellent in defending pick and roll plays! Therefore, Irving will struggle in doing tonight what he did on the team's last game in Milwaukee, where he faced the pathetic perimeter defense from Milwaukee, with Brandon Jennings, Monta Ellis and Mike Dunleavy. Coach Byron Scott against the Bucks put Irving defending Ellis instead of Jennings, in order to not tire Irving out on defense, but he will have to defend Chris Paul tonight and considering the effort he will have to make on offense, I don't expect him to be able to defend Chris Paul well. The Clippers have been active on ball pressure defense and with huge numbers in transition points. In fact, the Clippers have a total of 30 steals in just 3 games and they are also averaging 22 fast break points in those games!
Finally and considering the fact that we are in front of an apparent blowout scenario, Cleveland's bench is horrible and it's probably one of the worst in the league. In their game at Milwaukee, all starters had positive +/- (Thompson +13; Gee +11; Varejao +15; Irving +13; Waiters), while the bench players had terrible numbers (Walton -16; Zeller -18; Sloan -14; Miles -16; Gibson -17). One of the main strengths of the Clippers this season is their roster depth and so, in case of a blowout at the end of the 3rd quarter, I expect the Clippers' bench to still outscore Cleveland's second unit with ease during the 4th quarter.
I expect a clear bounce back from the Clippers tonight, after a very poor effort against the Warriors last Saturday and therefore, I'll be taking the team from LA in here!
Pick: 3 units (Single Dime Play) on 516 Los Angeles Clippers (-10) @ -110 / 1.91 on 5Dimes
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