Projected Line: Houston by 15 points
We are in front of a very important game for Houston, as they are starting a home span that they'll need to take advantage of it in order to go to the playoffs. The good news if that they had 3 days off to rest and prepare for this home span. Today's game is the final game of a home-home series with Phoenix. Houston surprisingly lost at Phoenix, even though they were 7-points favorites. In my opinion, the Rockets lost that game due to their lack of fresh legs. They had won at Golden State in the night before, on a game where they were very tired down the stretch and so, considering they have no depth on their roster, a letdown was evident. Note that with James Harden and Chandler Parsons on the court, the Rockets outscored the Suns by 4 points, but Phoenix's second unit solved the game for them, with some inspired performances from players like Kandall Marshall, Hamed Haddadi, P.J. Tucker and Michael Beasley.
Houston committed a total of 21 turnovers that originated 28 points off TO's for Phoenix. Turnovers has been a recurrent problem for the Rockets this season and everytime they play a back to back game, their turnover rate gets into 16.06%, while it is "just" 14.19% when they are rested. So, this is good news for today. I also can't ignore the fact that the Rockets shot 19-41 behind the line for an incredible 46.3% 3pts! This wasn't surprising, as the Suns have the worst 3pts defense in the league by allowing 39.2%! After this game, Phoenix hosted the Nuggets last Monday, where they lost by 15 points. For tonight's game, I expect Houston's offense to crush the Suns's awful perimeter defense. The Rockets's have an unstoppable offense when they are rested and I expect them to limit their turnovers as well. Phoenix's offense isn't consistent enough to be able to hang around with Houston's high potent offense, as when you give major minutes to players like Wesley Johnson and the Morris brothers, you won't be able to perform consistently for a long period of time. Therefore, I expect an easy blowout win for Houston tonight and so, I'll be taking them in here.
Pick: 3 units (Single Dime Play) on 614 Houston Rockets (-11) @ -110 / 1.91 on 5 Dimes
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