NBA - 815 Chicago Bulls @ 816 Indiana Pacers
Projected Line: 176 points
Chicago took advantage of Brooklyn's poor spot to crush them yesterday during the second quarter. Of course it would be tough to stop Brook Lopez, who has a solid post up game, but Chicago completely shutdown the Nets's backcourt not only with good close outs on the shooters, but also forcing 21 turnovers! The Bulls's good offensive game has based on Carlos Boozer and Joakim Noah who combined 19-29 (65.5%) FG! The problem for tonight's game at Indiana is that even though the Bulls had a 20 points lead during the fourth quarter yesterday, Coach Thibodeau refused to bench his starters and so, Joakim Noah and Luol Deng played 41 minutes each and even Kirk Hinrich played 39 minutes! Now on a back to back spot against Indiana's elite defense, Chicago's offense will definitely struggle. Don't expect Joakim Noah and Carlos Boozer to shoot a combined of 65% FG against the best interior defense in the league!
On the other hand, Chicago's defense is also at a good level. It's impressive their regularity even on bad spots by averaging a defensive rating of 102.4 in back to back games! Indiana's offense has been showing a nice flow at times, but that especially happens against teams with a poor perimeter defense, where George Hill and Paul George can have good games. This won't happen today, as Chicago's defense is an elite unit in closing out shooters while being #3 in the league with 33.6% 3pts allowed. By the way, Indiana is #1 in the league on 3pts defense with 31.6% 3pts! In the first two games between these two teams this season, we had a low scoring game and then, a shootout in the second contest. In that second game, 212 points were scored in a contest that had a surprising fast pace. Note that Chicago scored 101 points, while scoring just 44.3% FG, while Indiana had a great offensive game especially thanks to two guards: George Hill and Lance Stephenson, who shot a combined of 13-19 FG! That happened due to the fact that Kirk Hinrich didn't play, something that forced Nate Robinson to play 40 minutes! Joakim Noah also didn't play and he is the Bulls's defensive anchor! This time, these two players will play and so, I expect tonight's contest to be similar to the first game between these two teams that was also a very low scoring game. Therefore, I'll be taking the Under in here.
Pick: 3 units (Single Dime Play) on 815/816 Under 179,5 @ -110 / 1.91 on Bookmaker
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