Projected Line: 194 Points | pk line
With just three games played on this season and therefore with a super small sample, Washington is #30 in the league in offensive rates and naturally the linemakers are forced to reduce the totals line on their games due to their subpar offensive games. However, I watched all three games that the Wizards have played this season and even though they are a work in progress, the team has already a decent ball movement and a pretty underrated frontcourt. I wrote an article previewing their last game against Boston, where I stated their problems in generating offense with their starting unit:
"This starting lineup of Washington is an offensive disaster. By looking at the final numbers, we have Bradley Beal with 0-5 FG, Emeka Okafor with 1-6 FG, Trevor Ariza with 0-4 FG, with these three players shooting a combined of 1-15 FG! With four minutes to go on the 1st quarter, Washington had just scored two points! Boston was leading the game by 17-2, while Washington was shooting 1-14 FG! The Wizards finished the first quarter with 12 points scored, while shooting 4-19 FG!"
For this game, coach Randy Wittman was conservative and he kept the same starting unit, while saying that it is too early to start panicking, but what did we have?
Once again, Washington's starting lineup was horrible on offense, as they scored just 5 points in the first 6 minutes of the game! There are a lot of holes on this lineup! Washington has a group of very underrated players who work well on defense and that have a decent ball movement on offense, so the good news is that Randy Wittman finally recognized that and we had Emeka Okafor playing just 11 minutes and Trevor Ariza 19 minutes, while Kevin Seraphin, Chris Singleton, Jan Vesely and Martell Webster playing very well coming off the bench! Suddenly, the Wizards were very competitive and they scored 26 and 30 points in the 2nd and 4th quarter.
Another curious stat that validates that I've been telling about this team is their assists number. For a team that he is dead last in offensive rates, Washington had 26, 20 and 25 assists on their three games! In fact, they are #4 in the league in assist rate with a stellar 67.62%! This means that 2/3 of their FG made come from assists, a sign of good ball movement.
For today, if Randy Wittman realizes that the starting unit doesn't gel offensively, he won't waste a lot of time in making some moves. Fortunately for them, after facing Boston twice, the Wizards will now face the poor interior defensive team of Milwaukee.
The Bucks are coming from a clear home loss at Memphis, where we took the Grizzlies on our first Triple Dime of the season! Memphis had an expected edge down low, but it was also clear how bad Milwaukee's perimeter defense is, as Memphis shot 14-23 FG from 16-23 feet and 6-16 3pts! Basically, Memphis took advantage of Milwaukee's bad perimeter defense to crush them with 1.00 PPP (Points Per Possession) in Pick and roll ball handler, 1.05 PPP in spot ups and 1.31 PPP on transition plays!
Washington's offense will have a good spot to have a good offensive game tonight. They weren't very aggressive at Boston with just 7 free throw attempts and even though it looks that they shot a lot from the 3pts line (29 attempts), they made 10 of them and all of them were assisted!
On the other hand, Milwaukee depends a lot from Monta Ellis and Brandon Jennings and when both players struggle, Milwaukee's offense immediately struggles. They shot a combined of 11-38 FG against Memphis, with the good ball pressure of Memphis' backcourt making a lot of damage on the Bucks offense. Milwaukee also shot just 3-16 FG on pick and roll ball handler plays! The volume of shots coming from Monta Ellis and Brandon Jennings is just too way and with them being well defended, Milwaukee's offense simply collapsed. Coach Scott Skiles didn't have Beno Udrih available for last Wednesday's game and so, he didn't have a good replacement for his starting backcourt duo, something that caused both Monta Ellis and Brandon Jennings to play big minutes. For tonight, Beno Udrih is probable and this is immediately a big boost for Milwaukee's second unit!
Washington's defense has been decent so far this season, but both Monta Ellis and Brandon Jennings are certainly happy that they won't be facing Memphis again tonight, who were a very tough matchup for them. Both teams play on an uptempo in order to look to score in transition and in fact, Milwaukee is averaging 17 fast break points per game, while Washington is averaging 15 points! Milwaukee's biggest offensive strength is on the backcourt, while Washington's underrated frontcourt will torch Milwaukee's weak interior defense, so we have the right conditions to have a high scoring game in here. Therefore, I'll be taking the Over on this contest tonight.
Pick: 3 units (Single Dime Play) on 501/502 Over 190 @ -110 / 1.91 on Betonline
***ADDED PLAY***
I expect Washington's underrated frontcourt to really make this game highly competitive and perhaps even winning it outright, therefore I'll be taking the Wizards in here as well.
NOTE: Bovada has Washington +4 available!
Pick: 3 units (Single Dime Play) on 502 Washington Wizards (+3,5) @ -110 / 1.91 on Bookmaker
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