The San Antonio Spurs earned a 114-104 victory over the Utah Jazz last night. Now both teams have hopped on planes and traveled to Salt Lake City, where they will meet up once again tonight. The Spurs were 10 point favorites in last night's meeting, but find themselves only favored by one tonight. How should this major line change effect where we place our NBA picks?
During
this shortened NBA season, several teams find themselves playing each other two
games in a row. Not only is that the case in tonight’s matchup, but also the
Spurs and Jazz find themselves playing each other on back-to-back nights.
NBA betting lines favored the home Spurs by -10 last night. Tonight however, the NBA odds makers have decided to favor them by -1 on the road. There is a lot that goes into this
dramatic shift in the NBA lines, so let’s take a look at it for one of many of my NBA picks
for today.
Spurs’ Popovich; “health trumps
seeding”
The
Spurs are once again on a mad streak right now, as they have won eleven
straight games. I’ve been telling people all season not to count them out, and
that they are underrated. A 33-18-3 ATS record is easy evidence of that.
However, during this stretch, they have been giving rest to key guys and still
winning. Last night, the Spurs’ big three all played, and played exceptionally
well, but the Spurs rested DeJuan Blair and Stephen Jackson. This was the sixth
time in a row that the Spurs have beaten the Jazz,
Now we
come to the issue of the line discrepancy. How can the Spurs go from -10, to -1
overnight? The home versus road issue has something to do with it, but normally
that doesn’t go farther then three or four points in either direction. The
issue is with the aforementioned Spurs’ big three of Tony Parker, Manu Ginobli,
and Tim Duncan. One or all of them are likely to see the pine all throughout
the game, and not play. This would be typical Greg Popovich, with only three
weeks to go in the regular season.
It might
be a smart move, but it puts sports bettors in a bind. Whether the Spurs get the 1st
or 2nd seed doesn’t matter much, and Popovich knows it. It makes you
change your mind a bit about throwing your mortgage down on San Antonio.
Jazz out of tune
After it
looked like the Jazz could have made a playoff push, Utah is slowly fading into
the sunset. The Jazz’s three-season playoff drought might just be getting
longer this season, but that doesn’t mean they haven’t made a lot of good
moves.
Ever
since trading away Deron Williams, and losing out on Carlos Boozer and others
in free agency the Jazz have been in rebuild mode. They have some great pieces,
but have yet to find another great scorer to go along with Al Jefferson.
With
that being said, with six straight losses to the Spurs, and having the
possibility of all of the Spurs stars sitting this one out, the Jazz know they
have a great opportunity to grab a win at home. They are still a good home team
ATS, while the Spurs are not very good ATS on the road.
The Sharp Pick
As I
said earlier, the trends and stats really mean nothing, and although it’s hard
to tell what is going on in Greg Popvich’s mind, it is easy to take this game
for what it looks like. The Spurs are going to play the bench, and the Jazz are
going to win. The Spurs did the same thing just over a month ago in Portland. Ironically,
they played in Utah the night before, and then had to travel to Portland. The
Blazers won by 40. In this case, I see the same happening here. The Jazz are
still a very good team, despite all their injuries.
My Pick: Jazz ML +100