NBA Free Premium Play 02/08: Portland Trailblazers @ Houston Rockets

Portland  at Houston

NBA - 821 Portland Trailblazers @ 822 Houston Rockets Projected Line: 207 points Betting total plays on Houston's games in the right spots and the right matchups has been one of the keys to my success on the NBA this season. A perfect way to take the Under in Houston's games is when we can find the spots where they won't be physically at 100%. After all, they have a short rotation with their starters having big minutes and that combined with a frenetic pace makes them to struggle offensively on poor physical spots. I believe we are in the presence of that today, as Houston played Golden State at home and crush them, then they played at Miami with a trip involved and they were competitive, with all starters playing at least 32 minutes each, with four of them playing more than 35 minutes and James Harden playing 41 minutes. They are now coming back home to face Portland and we are talking about a Houston -> Miami -> Houston trip with three games played in four days. Portland has already built a nice identity and they know that they can't run up and down on the court, because they simply have the worst bench in the league, so their starters have to play heavy minutes in every single game. The Blazers won't want to run at all on this game and we have some recent examples of that. They faced Dallas twice recently (#5 in pace factor) and both games had a pace factor of 87.7 and 92.9! They also faced Denver and the pace of that game was 93.2, while in their game against Washington the pace was 90.4! Of course the pace of these games was faster than Portland's season average, but it was never even close to the pace the Blazers's opponents wanted for these games to be. Even though we are just in February, this game is already important for the Playoffs seeding. We are talking about two teams that are currently #8 and #9 in the Western conference standings and this series is currently favoring Portland by 2-0. If Houston loses this game, they will automatically lose a potential tie-break against Portland, so we can expect this game to have an intensity level much higher than it is common in games involving these two teams and that should be translated into more aggressive defense being played tonight. I don't believe this game will be such a high scoring contest and so, I'll be taking the Under in here. Pick: 3 units (Single Dime Play) on 821/822 Under 211 @ -110 / 1.91 on Bookmaker