Tag: Basketball

Oregon v North Carolina: Predictions on Point Spread and Totals

Posted on by Online Betting Pro

Every year armchair fans across the USA and further afield complete a March Madness bracket in which they predict the teams that will progress in the tournament. Tens of millions filled in online brackets this year and just 0.000003% anticipated that we would see North Carolina, Gonzaga, Oregon and South Carolina in the Final Four, illustrating what a rollercoaster ride this competition really is. Earlier this week we previewed Gonzaga v South Carolina, a game Gonzaga is expected to win, so now we move on to North Carolina v Oregon, which is a little closer in the betting lines.

Oregon Ducks v North Carolina Tar Heels

North Carolina was the favourite before the start of the tournament and has justified that status by cruising through to the Final Four. The Tar Heels have had to do it the hard way, overcoming second-seeded Kentucky in the Elite Eight and a very strong Butler team in the Sweet Sixteen. North Carolina is still the outright favourite to win the NCAA Championship (6/4 with SkyBet, compared to 13/8 at Ladbrokes on Gonzaga, 5/1 at BetVictor on Oregon and 9/1 at William Hill on South Carolina) and with good reason. The Tar Heels are by far and away the most experienced team left standing in this tournament.

Last year North Carolina suffered the heartbreak of losing to a three-point buzzer beater in the Championship Game against Villanova, and their four leading scorers this time around – Justin Jackson, Joel Berry II, Kennedy Meeks and Isaiah Hicks – all played a part in last year’s run to the final. They have tasted what it feels like to be runner-up and will be desperate to go one better this time around. In Roy Williams, they have a coach making his ninth appearance in the Final Four. None of the other three coaches left has ever been this far before. Third-seeded Oregon beat very good teams in Rhode Island and Michigan to reach the Elite Eight and then surprised everybody with a 14-point win over top-seeded Kansas. It has proved it can frustrate and beat the sport’s best offensive teams and will be very dangerous, especially due to the confidence gained from upsetting Kansas. The outright looks close to call, and UNC may shade it, but Oregon +5.5 at 5/6 with Betfred looks a really good bet. Kansas was considered by many the best team in the tournament and Oregon shut it down completely, so it could well do a similar job on UNC.

Prop Bets

This being a big game there are all sorts of weird and wonderful specials bets, from guessing the winning margin to whether the points in a particular half will be odd or even. The crazier ones are best avoided, but the traditional total points look good in this game. They are both strong offensive sides, but this is such a good game that it should prove a cautious affair under 153.5 points at 5/7 with Bet365 looks good.

Harden looks a great bet for MVP after breaking records

Posted on by Online Betting Pro

Houston Rockets guard James Harden pulled off a magnificent feat on the final day of 2016, earning an astonishing 53 points, 17 assists and 16 rebounds in his team’s 129-122 victory of the New York Knicks. It was the first time any player has ever broken the 50-15-15 barrier and it effectively put him in a two-horsed MVP race with Oklahoma City Thunder’s Russell Westbrook, and it is set to be a fascinating battle in 2017. Meanwhile, the Golden State Warriors and Cleveland Cavaliers have consolidated their positions at the top of their respective divisions and are on course for another NBA Finals showdown, with Cleveland gaining a psychological edge by beating them on Christmas Day. It promises to be another exciting year in the NBA, with plenty of value for punters.

MVP

Westbrook looked to have this accolade sewn up going into the festive period. The Oklahoma City guard is crucial to his team and has been dubbed Mr Triple Double this year thanks to his phenomenal stats. For the uninitiated, a triple double requires a player to hit double figures on points, assists and rebounds in a game, and Westbrook is averaging 30.9 points per game – the best in the league – along with 10.7 assists and 10.5 rebounds. The closest contender looked set to be LeBron James, but the Cavaliers superstar’s stats aren’t as high this season and he has been rested a fair bit, as evidenced in Cleveland’s defeat to the Pistons on December 27.

Now though Harden has muscled in, with a record-breaking performance. He became only the fifth player of all time to record a triple-double while also scoring 40 points, the others being James, Westbrook, Vince Carter and Tracy McGrady, but his points and rebounds put his performance a notch above. He has now become second favourite to be crowned regular season MVP. Some bookmakers are offering just 2/1 or 9/4 on him, but Bet Victor has a generous 4/1, which looks a great bet. This looks like a two horsed race now, and with 888 Sport offering 2/1 on favourite Westbrook, you can back both and make a profit if they remain at the top – which they should.

NBA Championship

The Warriors still have the best record in the league, with a win record of 85.3% and look unstoppable in the Western Conference, which they are just 4/11 to win with Sky Bet (although some may fancy a speculative bet on Westbrook’s Thunder at 40/1 with William Hill). But the team to really watch looks to be the Cavaliers. Their win record is not so good, at just 78.1%, but they are still comfortably leading the conference and have made a habit of resting James and losing without him. But when he plays, they are ferocious, as they showed by beating the Warriors 109-108 on Christmas Day. The Cavs were down 14 points in the fourth quarter but rallied to make up the deficit and win it at the death, with James in the driving seat on 31 points. They bested the Warriors in last season’s Finals, and look like they could do so again in 2017, so the 3/1 various bookmakers are offering on them looks a good bet right now. But the Warriors will take some stopping and also look good at 4/5 with Sky Bet. Again you can hedge your bets on these two.

Upcoming games

The Warriors face an out of sorts Bulls team on Thursday and can be expected to cover a high spread, while the Cavs should beat the Trail Blazers pretty comfortably on the same day. A huge game takes place on Friday between the Rockets and the Thunder, where will we see Harden and Westbrook go head to head. The Rockets got the better of them when they last played, winning by three points on December 10, and can repeat the feat here as they are on a roll at the moment.

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

Posted on by Online Betting Pro

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

Posted on by Online Betting Pro

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