NBA - 713 Sacramento Kings @ 714 Utah Jazz
Projected Line: 196 points
Sacramento is in the middle of a road trip and they are coming from a blowout loss at NY against the Knicks, where they were on a back to back spot and facing a team that had lost to them in Sacramento. The heavy loss was inevitable and my play on the Knicks -11,5 was one of the easiest for me of the whole season so far! Sacramento kept showing no offensive flow and they ended the game with 14 assists and 19 turnovers! The most impressive was that DeMarcus Cousins ended the game with 10-14 FG and 5-5 FT, but the Kings still lost the game by 39 points! It seems like the Kings have lost their focus since the rumors about the change of their franchise to Seattle and on tonight's final game of their 6-games road trip, how will they be focused for tonight, especially with 4 days off to rest after tonight's game?
Recap Blazers vs Jazz: Portland is coming from a double-header against Utah and the key for the Blazers's win in the second game was using the same tactics they used during the second half of the first game: double-teaming Utah's big players whenever they touched the ball. With this tactics, Portland gave the Jazz a lot of space on the outside and they used that to shoot 8-19 3pts, mostly thanks to Randy Foye, who shoot 6-12 3pts on his own. However, this resulted in Utah's frontcourt being limited and so, the Blazers ended up winning the game. Portland 's offense looked a bit lost in the second half, with just 53 points scored with six minutes to go in the 3rd quarter, but then Damian Lillard exploded against Utah's slow footed guards. The poor individual defense from Jamaal Tinsley, Paul Millsap and Al Jefferson was also exposed by Portland, especially by Damian Lillard and LaMarcus Aldridge that had big games thanks to that, while the Blazers really took advantage of that to have good numbers on pick and rolls and post up plays.
The Kings are playing once again on the road tonight and this is the fourth time they will be playing on the road after losing a game by 20 points or more this season. The first three games on this spot went clearly under the total posted: 85-98 at Milwaukee, 90-101 at Phoenix and 96-94 at Washington! With their current ball movement, only a defensive disaster from Utah will allow Sacramento to have a big offensive game on this contest. Utah has been struggling defensively on pick and rolls and spots, they got crushed by Portland thanks to that, but Sacramento's offense has been terrible on these two areas lately: 0.70 PPP on pick and roll ball handler plays and 0.87 PPP on spot ups over their last 10 games! The only threat of Sacramento's offense is really DeMarcus Cousins against Al Jefferson, but if Cousins starts having a big offensive game, coach Corbin has Ener Kanter and Derrick Favors on the bench to help defending Cousins.
Utah's offense keeps struggling without Gordon Hayward. Utah's outside shooting is completely dependent from Randy Foye, who has been actually red hot, but this isn't a good sign for them, as they have stopped showing any kind of explosiveness on their offense. They have averaged 9.25 fast break points over their last 4 games, while their season average prior to those games was 15.7 fast break points per game! Utah has been using a slower pace on their games lately and so, considering their recent games, I expect this game to be a half court one. In fact, even though the two previous games between these two teams were high scoring games, the pace was slow (89.5 and 87.0). Now with both teams currently being in worse offensive spots than they were in those games, I expect this game to go Under the total posted.
Pick: 3 units (Single Dime Play) on 713/714 Under 199 @ -110 / 1.91 on Bookmaker
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