NBA Free Premium Play 02/04: Los Angeles Clippers @ Washington Wizards

LA Clippers  at Washington

NBA - 703 Los Angeles Clippers @ 704 Washington Wizards Projected Line: 192 points After a hot stretch that coincided with John Wall's return to the lineup, Washington is back into their bad habits on offense. They never stopped being a solid team on defense and they the most underrated defensive team in the league. With John Wall on the floor, Washington is playing at a faster pace and they are obviously also scoring more fast break points than ever by scoring more than 10 fast break points in 11 of their last 12 games! Their problem is that the team has developed the habit of dumping the ball down low on Nene Hilario and Emeka Okafor, with all their perimeter players refusing to make cuts, screens or anything really. So, a team that was actually having some decent 3pts numbers has suddenly shot 24-85 (28.2%) 3pts! I won't even talk about their performance in the second quarter of their last three games, where they got outscored 11-23 against Philadelphia (lost the game by 8 points), 10-16 against Memphis (lost the game by 9 points) and 9-24 against San Antonio (lost the game by 10). Over their last three games, Washington shot terribly, but they also had the problem of facing three teams that are currently in the top 10 in the league in transition defense, so they saw their best offensive weapon getting stopped in those games. Regarding the Clippers, on the writeup yesterday on my Celtics play, I wrote the following about the Clippers's struggles, especially on the offensive end: “(...) without Chris Paul, their offense has been a disaster. The Clippers have just dished 15, 20, 25, 33, 16 and 12 assists on their last six games and those 33 assists was against Portland on a home-home back to back series, where the Clippers used their superior depth to pound the Blazers. (...) Eric Bledsoe lacks the skills to run an offense on his own and even though the team is averaging 0.82 PPP on pick and roll ball handler plays for the season, on their last six games, they had just 0.60, 1.30, 0.60, 0.40, 0.77 and 0.83 PPP!” So, for yesterday's game, unlike their previous game, the Clippers changed a bit their offensive strategy and they run more! In their previous games, the Clippers were involved in games with a pace factor of 85.3, 86.3, 88.7 and 86.9, while yesterday's game had a pace of 91.7! With this faster pace, the Clippers were able to score 16 fast break points, their highest mark of their last 5 games! However, they tried riskier passes throughout the game and Boston took advantage of the Clippers's 21 turnovers to score 33 points off them! Another problem for the Clippers has been their second unit. All season long the Clippers's second unit has been crushing their opponents with their uptempo style. But in yesterday's game, the second unit of Grant Hill, Jamal Crawford, Matt Barnes, Lamar Odom and Ronny Turiaf started the second quarter with two points and six turnovers in 5:30 minutes of basketball! Please comeback fast Chris Paul! Now the Clippers will be playing at Washington tonight and this will be their 4th game in 6 days. Yesterday they were very aggressive, they ran up and down during the second half and almost recovered from the huge early hole they got into to win the game. Boston had no legs at the end of the game and for tonight, I expect the Clippers to follow the same style from yesterday against a Wizards team that has been playing on a similar style and considering their rest edge, they will try to take advantage of that and run the Clippers out of the court. Having in account the fact that Washington's offense depends a lot from their transition plays, we need to take a look at what the Clippers's transition defense has been doing lately. They are #10 in the league with 1.13 PPP allowed for the season, but they had a huge drop over their last 10 games with 1.29 PPP! So, the Wizards's offense should have a nice edge tonight. The Clippers's offense should also come very aggressive for tonight and John Wall has been struggling in defending opposing guards who can penetrate well with their dribbling. This was how Jrue Holiday and Tony Parker had big games against Washington and this is exactly Eric Bledsoe's main strength on offense, so Wall won't be able to stop him tonight. On the game played in LA between these two teams earlier on the season, Washington was playing their third game in four days and they were coming from a win at Denver the night before, so it wasn't a good spot for them. The Clippers had still Chris Paul available and he controlled the pace of the game, even though the game still had a relatively fast 91.93 pace! However, both teams were terrible on the free throws (Washington 15-27; LA Clippers 21-31 FT) and this is the main reason why the game had just 181 points. This time, I expect the game to be wilder and to also have better efficiency from the free throw line. Therefore I expect this contest to be a high scoring game, so I'll be taking the Over in here. Pick: 3 units (Single Dime Play) on 703/704 Over 187,5 @ -110 / 1.91 on Bookmaker