Thursday's NBA Selection

[skybluesam]

One main bet for tonight

NAP
Cleveland @ Chicago

Cleveland +3.5
Cleveland on moneyline 2.54

The second match between these two teams in the space of a week. As I'm sure most already know, the biggest trade of the year was an 11 player, 3 team deal, which involved these two teams. Opinions were mixed amongst fans, personally I was willing to reserve judgement to see how things beared out.

At the start of the year, Chicago were being touted about as one of the East's elite. They have almost undoubtedly been the biggest letdown of the season. Incredibly, at 12 games below the .500 mark, they are still in the playoff hunt in the weak East. Still, I'm not convinced the trade has made them any better and there's a good chance they may still miss out.

Lebron James of the Cavaliers is in incredible form and imo is the league's true MVP this year. He is capable of beating teams on his own and lit up the Bulls for 37 just a few days ago.

In conclusion, the Cavs have been a better team all year and there is no reason to suspect this trade has made the Bulls any better. They beat the Bulls the other day, albeit at home and Lebron James will surely explode for another big night. Basically, this line just looks plain wrong.

The only reason I can see for this is that the Cavs are on a back to back night, but a quick scan through their recent results reveals this might not be an issue. Last month in back to backs, they pushed the league's best Boston to within 5 points and beat Indiana Orlando and Atlanta, none of whom are much worse than the Bulls. The Cavs are a standout bet.



On the Houston trail, they are in Dallas tonight. The odds are almost even, reason being Dallas are without Dirk Nowitzki, their leading scorer. To me, Dallas now become solely a jumpshooting team and a team that already has very little inside presence now has even less. I said before that Houston's only problem without Yao is that they get scored on inside a little easily. That will not be a problem at all tonight. Houston will use their usual defence, which is to block the lanes as much as possible and try and force the opposition into tough jumpshots. Imo, that will be enough to hold Dallas well under 100 points, probably under 90 points. I had a quick look at unders, but the total tonight is 181.5 and that looks about right. A bet on Houston should pay dividends though as I think Dallas will really struggle against Houston's D without Dirk.

[skybluesam]

Looks like I read that one all wrong. Maybe I should have waited a bit longer before passing judgement on that trade. The worst shooting team in the league shot lights out against a good defensive team. At least Houston avoided a loss for us. Truly sensational from them, they're just playing sublime basketball