Projected Line: 210 points
Both teams are coming from games in the North and they had to travel back to Texas to play tonight's game. San Antonio had a monster game against Oklahoma City at home, then they played a back to back game at Minnesota, where Coach Popovich rested Kawhi Leonard and Tim Duncan, and now they are returning home to play their third game in four nights. On the other hand, Dallas will be playing the final game of a 4-games road trip, where they played every game with a 1 day off rest. This will be the fourth and last game between these two teams on the regular season and San Antonio comfortably won the first three games. On the first two contests, San Antonio had a better spot and Dirk Nowitzki was still very limited, so the Spurs crushed the Mavericks without trouble. On the third game, Dallas was super rested with 3 days off, while San Antonio had 1 day off, but played without Tim Duncan.
The main difference for tonight's game will be Tony Parker's absence, who averaged 56.1% FG, 20.7 points and 8.3 assists on the first three games of the series. I believe Dallas will be much more competitive tonight, as they have a much better offensive flow nowadays, especially with an interesting lineup with Vince Carter, Elton Brand, Brandan Wright and Darren Collison. The Mavericks's offense is mostly based on pick and roll ball handler plays (17% volume), spot ups (20% volume) and transitions (16% volume). They have decent numbers on pick and roll ball handler plays with 0.80 PPP, while they have been amazing on spot ups and transitions. San Antonio's defense is regressing on transitions (1.09 PPP season vs 1.19 PPP L10 games and 1.25 PPP L5 games), so I expect Dallas to have a good offensive game tonight. Their second unit is very confident right now and matchup wise, Elton Brand will come off the bench and have a clear edge down low over Matt Bonner/Boris Diaw/DeJuan Blair, while Dirk Nowitzki will force Tiago Splitter to get out of his comfort zone and have a very good offensive game in here as well.
Dallas has been struggling on defense at the PG defense and so, Tony Parker's absence will give them some relief. However, San Antonio has been having super numbers on transitions, the same happening with cuts. They are also quite nice on pick and roll ball handler plays and post ups. Dallas's transition defense has been a complete mess with 1.30 PPP allowed since the All Star Break, while their pick and roll ball handler defense is also quite poor due to their struggles at the PG position. Therefore, the Spurs should have another huge offensive game tonight over the Mavericks. I believe that San Antonio will score a lot today, as on the previous games where they lost and were a home favorite in the following game, they scored 109 points against Philadelphia, 108 points against the LA Lakers, 106 points against Minnesota, 130 points against Sacramento and 105 points against Oklahoma City. On the other hand, Dallas is also playing well on offense and they have a good second unit, so even if San Antonio decides the game early, the Mavericks should still be able to produce good offense on the trash time. Therefore, I expect this contest to be another very high scoring game between these two teams and so, I'll be taking the Over in here.
Pick: 3 units (Single Dime Play) on 701/702 Over 206 @ -110 / 1.91 on Bookmaker
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