NBA - 505 Toronto Raptors @ 506 Milwaukee Bucks
Projected Line: Milwaukee by 9 points
Toronto isn't going anywhere with this ball movement. Yesterday against Indiana, the Raptors's ball movement was horrible once again with just 12 assists. The excuse in here was that they faced the best defensive team in the league, but this is a trend that has been around them for too many games now with no improvement. The good news for the Raptors is that tonight's game won't be as halfcourt as yesterday's contest was, but the truth is that they've also recently lost against Washington and Cleveland, with those two games being played at a fast pace. However, besides having a huge problem on their ball movement, Toronto is also getting pounded on the rebounding department since the start of the Rudy Gay era. Over their last eight games, the Raptors have grabbed just 44.7% of the rebounds. So, a bad offensive team who has rebounding problems as well only has two options: either they are an elite defensive team or they're screwed. And they're pretty much screwed.
Milwaukee has been the opposite of Toronto. Since Larry Sanders came back from injury, Milwaukee's defense is back to having nice numbers. They were even excellent with a defensive rating of 95.5 and 105.2 over their last two games! Of course that wasn't reflected in Houston's score who scored 107 points, but that was because the game was played at a super fast pace. Offensively, now that Milwaukee has J.J. Redick coming off the bench, the Bucks have now some great options coming off the bench, with both J.J. Redick and Mike Dunleavy being very important on their win at Houston. Milwaukee is now coming back home after nice back to back road wins at Dallas and Houston. I have no doubts that they are playing a much more complete and better basketball than Toronto right now. Even though the Raptors were on a winning streak last week and they were just four games away from the Bucks in the fight for the #8 seed in the East, a lot has changed since then. Toronto are playing poor basketball right now, especially on offense, while Milwaukee are now playing much better with the J.J. Redick trade and with Larry Sanders back. Therefore, I expect an easy win for Milwaukee and so, I'll be taking them in here.
Pick: 3 units (Single Dime Play) on 506 Milwaukee Bucks (-5) @ -110 / 1.91 on Bookmaker
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