Tag: NBA

Home Sweet…Home? The Portland Trailblazers @ the Chicago Bulls

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Home Sweet…Home? The Portland Trailblazers @ the Chicago Bulls (7pm EST; Friday December 12, 2014)

 

By James Ng

In a close game, playing at home can swing the contest in your favor. Somebody please remind the Chicago Bulls, who despite a respectable 13-8 record to start the season, have a less respectable 3-5 record at home. This is music to the ears for the Portland Trailblazers, who have beaten the Bulls seven times in a row heading into Chicago. 

The Setup:

On the surface, the hard-nosed Chicago Bulls have what it takes to win a title in a wide open NBA season, provided former MVP Derrick Rose doesn’t collapse into a heap at any given moment. Despite Rose’s endless injuries – like heavyweight haymakers spaced neatly across two-plus seasons – the Chicago Bulls are tough to beat. Coach Tom Thibodeau doesn’t know a lower gear. Other coaches might cruise after losing his best player for two-plus years, hoping for a better draft pick to compensate. But not this guy. He pushed his Bulls harder and harder and that resulted in a hardened squad that is used to playing without their best player.

Rose will be playing the Trailblazers on Friday, so that’s settled (we hope). The Bulls will need all the help they can get as the Blazers have been excellent this season, with All-Stars LaMarcus Aldridge and Damian Lillard leading them to a league third-best 17-5 record in the superior Western Conference. In short, the Portland Trailblazers are really good.

They will even have motivation taken care of when they visit the Bulls. Portland is coming off their worst loss of the season at the awful Minnesota Timberwolves. Ouch. If ever a statement needed to be made, it is after losing to a truly terrible team. They’ll want to punch out the next team they see.

But before losing at the woeful T-Wolves, Portland was the hottest road team in the NBA with seven straight victories away from home. They had ridden a five-game win streak into Minnesota, which suggests that unexpected loss was an aberration most likely due to scheduling and a rare off-night for Aldridge.

Head-to-Head Review:

History has also been on Portland’s side and they are riding a seven-game win streak against the Chicago Bulls. They have also won three straight games in Chicago, holding the Bulls to 84.0 measly points per game during that stretch.

They ride and die with Aldridge, but strangely the big man’s production hasn’t affected the way Portland dominates Chicago. In his previous three games against the Bulls, Portland has won despite a lack of production from Aldridge as he averaged a highly unusual 11.0 points on 28% shooting. 

However, for seven games before this, Aldridge simply destroyed Chicago by averaging 28.3 points on 60% shooting. This may be because Chicago previously employed power forward Carlos Boozer, now defending poorly and failing to get rebounds at the historically bad Los Angeles Lakers. In Boozer’s place? We have an older Pau Gasol, an undisputed great player but never synonymous with defending. 

Both Gasol and terrifying defensive center Joakim Noah are listed as “day-to-day” with niggling injuries, and that plays directly into Aldridge’s hands. He has shown he knows how to play against the stringent Bulls defense, and we look for him to have a strong game against a weakened Bulls front line.

Sure, we have to consider that during this dominant Portland run against Chicago, Derrick Rose wasn’t playing basketball. This time, he will be suiting up. He says he is healthy now and ready to make a run, but we’ve heard this time and again from Rose who despite his good intentions, is quite simply a question mark. So, let’s not get our hopes up, Chicago. His heart is in the right place but sadly, his knees might not be.

So the question is: if Derrick Rose shows up, will that be enough to swing the game in his favour against a Portland team that is very comfortable playing against these pain-in-the-neck Chicago Bulls? It depends on what sort of vengeful mood Portland’s Damian Lillard is in.

The Pick and the Lines:

Lillard is a point guard who is fearless, loves the big stage and likes to send a message. In this respect, great players are like predators that sniff out weakness, and Rose’s injuries have unwittingly painted a target on his back. We just don’t know what Derrick Rose can bring, and guys like Damian Lillard love the smell of blood.

Crucially, Aldridge is likely to submit a strong game after such a terrible showing in Minnesota. And while other power forwards can struggle against the Bulls’ suffocating defense, Aldridge has already proved he can be dominant against them. 

We’ve got a pair of Portland All-Stars who are primed for good performances. We’ve got a Chicago Bulls team that has struggled at home this season. We have Portland’s win streak against the Bulls, stretching back to a time when Chicago’s defense was even stronger than it is now. We have Chicago playing with a hobbled front line.

And we have Chicago as the team that is favoured by two points! 

And for this last reason, our pick is Portland to win and/or cover the spread.

BetBright +2 Portland (20/21)

The Year of the Dark Horse: Dallas Mavericks @ Memphis Grizzlies

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By James Ng

 

If ever there was a year for an unlikely champion, then this is the one. The defending champions in San Antonio aside, there are no great teams out there. There are only advanced projects or former contenders on the verge of collapse. 

Cleveland is still finding itself and Oklahoma City might not even make the playoffs after crushing injuries to superstar tandem Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook. The Chicago Bulls are held hostage daily by Derrick Rose’s endless injuries and the league-leading Golden State Warriors are very, very good, but untested. 

In short, this is an NBA season lacking in established greatness. This makes our Western Conference matchup of the week between the Dallas Mavericks and the Memphis Grizzlies all the more compelling. Here we have a pair of dark horses with an actual chance of lifting the trophy in June.

Who are they?

Dallas shocked the world by winning the NBA title in 2011 and rolling over the LeBron-led Miami Heat. Since then, they’ve surfed wave after wave of mediocrity. But this season, they are back. With 2011 championship center Tyson Chandler reuniting with Dirk Nowitzki and elite head coach Rick Carlisle in Dallas, they have rediscovered their hunger. They have dynamic creativity on the wing with a more efficient Monta Ellis, they have great shooters to spread the floor and in Chandler, they have their elite defensive anchor back where he belongs. We haven’t been able to say this since 2011, but the Dallas Mavericks are good. 

However, they still can’t defend consistently at an elite level.

The Memphis Grizzlies are no pushovers. They are the last team in the NBA to play old-school physical 1980’s basketball with two dominant low post beasts in Zach Randolph and Marc Gasol. It’s a fearsome big man tandem, coupled with one of the most underrated point guards in the league (Mike Conley) and a defensive wing terror in Tony Allen. 

They crush, they grind and they torture you to death. They are also playing outstanding basketball and are tied for the league’s second best record. 

However, they sometimes struggle to score enough points against athletic shooting teams that spread the floor. Teams just like Dallas.

The Past Five Games – a Snapshot:

Dallas: 4-1 in last five games; 116 points per game (ppg), 111.4 opponent’s ppg (oppg)

Here we see a typical Dallas. They can score and score but they failed to hold any team under 100 points in the past five games. During that stretch, they played the historically bad Philadelphia 76ers and the raw Milwaukee Bucks (twice), and that is alarming. If Dallas is to beat Memphis, it will be through the offensive end.

Memphis: 3-2 in last five games; 101.8 ppg, 96.6 oppg

Yes, they can defend. However, their two losses in the last five games were against Houston and San Antonio, both Western Conference powerhouses who scored over 100 points on Memphis. 

This is telling because Memphis struggles to contain teams that spread the floor, move the ball fast and run lots of high pick and rolls (often with three-point shooting power forwards). Houston and San Antonio both play this style. 

But crucially for our purposes today, the Dallas Mavericks also play like this. It is likely Memphis will struggle to hold Dallas under 100 points.

Key Matchups:

Who will guard Dallas legend Dirk Nowitzki? His elite perimeter shooting at the power forward position means that Zach Randolph will be doing a lot of something he hates: chasing mobile shooters around the perimeter. True, Randolph can use his size and brute strength to beat Nowitzki down in the low post on offense, but Dallas has the upper hand in making Randolph pay the price on defense.

The second key matchup will be how successful Tony Allen, an elite hard-nosed perimeter defender for Memphis, will be in guarding the explosive Monta Ellis. Expect Ellis to struggle some with Allen all over him, but he’s smart enough to play the decoy to perfection.

The X-factor:

Memphis’s Vince Carter may not be “Half-Man, Half-Amazing” anymore in his twilight years, but boy has he developed into a consistent and threatening wing shooter. If he goes off against his old team, he could singlehandedly swing this matchup in the Grizzlies favour.

The Pick, the Spread and the Money Lines:

Memphis is a -3.5 point favourite to win this game, which means they must beat Dallas by at least four points to cover the spread. Or if you bet on Dallas (+3.5 points) to cover the spread, then the Mavericks must either win or lose by 3 points or less for you to cash in. 

This is an early season matchup that is unusually important, psychologically. We expect a tough and close game, which would usually favour the slow grind that Memphis thrives in. 

However, Dallas head coach Rick Carlisle is one of the best in the league and a champion both as a player and coach. If anyone can exploit Memphis’s greatest strength – their size – and turn it into a weakness, it is Rick Carlisle.

Such a close matchup makes choosing a spread winner difficult (especially at identical -110 odds for both teams), so I’d look to bet for an outright winner (if available). If so, I’d bet according to the money line and which team is the odds underdog. 

And that team is the Dallas Mavericks. They are the exactly what Memphis struggles with most. They have an elite defensive center to hassle Marc Gasol with. They have a championship coach who will exploit Memphis’s matchups and turn their strengths into weaknesses. And they have their hunger back.

From bookmakers still offering an outright winner for this game, Dallas is a more sensible bet even though the odds are shortening. It should be a close game. So, we look to where we can risk less to win more, and in this case it would be the slight underdog Dallas Mavericks.

Skybet: Memphis outright win: 8/13; Dallas outright win: 11/8

 

A Battle for Identity: The Cleveland Cavaliers @ The New York Knicks

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A Battle for Identity: The Cleveland Cavaliers @ The New York Knicks (Thursday, December 4, 8pm EST)

By James Ng

You would hope by the age of 30 that you’d know who you are and what you do. This is especially true in professional sports, where 30 heralds the downward swing of a player’s prime years. No spring chickens are they then, LeBron James and Carmelo Anthony, to be searching for an identity in their twelfth season in the NBA at the age of 29 and 30, respectively.

We have the undisputed best player alive in James, going home to Ohio this summer to build a new team after winning two titles in four years with the Miami Heat. Anthony, on the other hand, is in year one of the Phil Jackson revamp of the New York Knicks, complete with a rookie head coach in Derek Fisher and the attempted resurrection of the legendary Triangle Offense.

Who are the New York Knicks and what is a Triangle Offense?

Phil Jackson and the Triangle Offense have claimed 11 NBA Championships (six titles with Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls; five titles in the 00’s with Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant). The Triangle is Jackson’s personal weapon of choice in his storied career. It has been proven time and again, but the system is notoriously difficult to master for lesser basketball minds. It is based entirely on structured yet improvised movement resulting in equal opportunities for all on offense.

In short, you couldn’t have picked a worse offense for Carmelo Anthony’s New York Knicks. He is one of the 10 most talented players today but regrettably (for the Triangle’s purposes), he is also a relentless volume shooter, ball hog and NBA black hole. The ball simply does not move enough in a Carmelo-led offense, and his current teammates (Jose Calderon aside) might struggle to spell “Triangle Offense”, never mind trying to run it.

It’s resulted in a 4-14 start to the season with little relief in sight. Things seem to get worse by the year for Carmelo Anthony, and he doesn’t have time for yet another throwaway season. 

Cleveland’s Identity:

Even for the struggling Cleveland Cavaliers, their early issues seem cute in comparison. Sitting on an 8-7 record through the first month of the season, it hasn’t been easy to blend LeBron’s historic talents with a pair of supremely talented All-Stars in Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love. It’s been tough, but not New York Knicks TOUGH.

Some wise fools (raises hand) before the season proclaimed this Cavs team could challenge 70 wins, but a quick look into LeBron’s first year with the Miami Heat in 2011 should have put that idiotic notion to bed early. It is easy to forget that Heat team went 6-8 to start the season after James arrived to join fellow superstars Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh. We laughed heartily as Miami flamed out in the Finals when they were soundly beaten by the underdog Dallas Mavericks. 

But let us not forget: after a mediocre start, greatness still responded. The Heat still nearly cracked 60 wins that season and finished as the Eastern Conference #2 seed with a 58-24 record. 

Piece by piece, the Cavs will find their niche and become a dominant team. Yes, they’ve lost to terrible/unheralded teams such as the Knicks and the Utah Jazz. Yes, LeBron James recently called his team “fragile” after a string of four straight defeats. Yes, they have a rookie NBA head coach. But this Cavs team has too much talent, too much depth and too much LeBron to stay bad for long. They’ve averaged 109 points and only given up 86 in their last three games (all wins). They’ve begun to figure it out. Their identity is in the mail.

The Knicks look like a team that will never figure out its identity, and that’s probably because it’s been saddled with the wrong one. It’s not all Carmelo’s fault either. He may shoot the ball like it’s about to expire, but he is also an immensely gifted and versatile basketball player. The main problem is the Knicks have entrusted one of the NBA’s most complex motion offenses to a team that is distinctly underwhelming in its basketball IQ with an unapologetic volume shooter as the centerpiece.

How will it play out when they face each other again this week?

This sets up Thursday’s matchup between the two teams at Madison Square Garden quite nicely. They’ve already played each other on opening night, and Carmelo ruined James’s homecoming by draining an 18-foot jump shot to snatch victory late on. 

This rematch has a dominant Cleveland win written all over it and sometimes, life really is that easy. Cleveland are on an upswing. The New York Knicks though are still stuck in neutral with a pair of burst tires. A monumental scoring performance from Anthony might be enough to steal a win, but that way of thinking has hardly been a model for success since he arrived in New York (win/loss records the last four Knicks seasons: 42-40, 36-30, 54-28, 37-49).

What’s bad news for the Knicks is that the Cavs can flat out score. The Knicks are an average-to-terrible defensive team, currently 16th in the NBA in opponents PPG. But their defense, underwhelming as it is, is not their main problem. Their woeful offense – fourth from last in NBA points per game this season – is the bigger issue and it basically means they can’t score and can barely defend. Such is the price of learning the Triangle with pieces that don’t fit. Such is what we consider when we look at the spread.

To heap on further misery: Carmelo Anthony is struggling with back spasms, having just missed two games before returning to lose at home against the Heat on December 1. Looking for help in this roster is an exercise in futility while Anthony is struggling for fitness, so we can expect a low scoring game from them especially if Anthony struggles early on.

The truth is the Knicks stink. They have lost four straight games after falling to Miami, and have lost six of the seven games, 13 of their last 15. They are terrible and they know it. The Cavs know it too, but complacency will not be an issue as they are hardly the finished article at this point. In a game where neither team is where it should be, we look to talent to win the game. And there is no comparison in talent between these two teams. 

Let us also not forget that Madison Square Garden is a historical soapbox for NBA superstars, and the great ones just LOVE to lay down a gigantic game at MSG in the Big Apple. It’s practically tradition by now, so we’re looking out for a huge game from one of the Cavs’ “Big Three”. That is probably more than enough to defeat the sorry New York Knickerbockers at home and cover the spread twice over.

-7.5 Cavs 10/11 Coral