I have been waiting for the line for this Sunday's game against Washington for a couple of weeks now in anticipation of possibly making my biggest bet of the year. Well, it looks like Christmas has came two days early in the form of ATL -3 @ Detroit. Let's get in to it.
Atlanta vs Detroit
Detroit's only two impressive wins on this streak are against SAS and Dallas.
SAS did what they had to do for much of the game and had this game won. Even after missing 5 of 7 FTs late in the game, the Spurs were still up by 3 with 10 seconds left. This is when Pop inexplicably decided to intentionally foul one of the best FT shooters in the game (Meeks). Of course Meeks hits both FTs. The Spurs then turn it over on the inbounds play and Detroit takes the W. The Spurs had Detroit beat and the Spurs were playing their B-league team that night. There was no Kawhi, it was Tony's first game back and he only played 13 minutes and Duncan only played 22. Patty Mills also had one of his worst games of the year.
I was more impressed with Detroit's win over Dallas and I lost some money on this one as I had Dallas in a ML parlay with ATL and OKC. The biggest issue with Dallas is Chandler has no range on offense which allowed Drummond to patrol the paint all night. If Drummond is able to patrol the paint, you must be able to score from outside and Dallas shot 6/22 from 3 that night. It was actually worse as they went 3/6 from 3 in the last 6 minutes of the game (garbage time). Dallas shot 18.7% from 3 when it mattered. Detroit was 10/21 for 47.6%.
-Atlanta has actually been playing better on the road than at home since they went on this run. They are 11-1 on the road in their last 12 while scoring 105.75 pts per game. They are 11-2 at home while scoring 99.08 pts per game.
-Atlanta is loaded with bigs who can hit outside shots. Horford and Antic will force Drummond/Monroe out of the paint on defense. Antic has been playing great, as of late, with 3 consecutive double digit scoring performances and 36 pts in his last 3 games. Monroe is one of the worst PnR defenders at his position. He will have major problems staying in front of Teague/Schroder and Milsap/Horford off of the PnR.
-Atlanta's bigs are agile and will have no problem keeping up with Detroit at the PF position when they go small.
-Drummond will get his. I suggested to take Jordan props in the Clippers game and he cashed on both the rebounds and points prop. I expect that Drummond will do the same tonight. Drummond will likely end up with 15 and 15 give or take a couple on each end.
-Jennings and Augustin combined for 18 points at the rim against Dallas. ATL is probably a top 3 defense in the league when it comes to stopping penetration. I expect ATL to hold the pair to far less than 18 at the rim tonight. Probably closer to 10.
-They have no way of stopping Teague. Teague's recent play has been as good as any PG in the league. Only Curry is shooting for a higher FG%. Neither Jennings nor Augustin can stay in front of Teague. Teague went off for 28 pts on 15 shots in the first matchup.
ATL -2.5 XtraLARGE
This will be my biggest play of the season so far. I am currently locked in with a LARGE play on Atlanta -2.5 I am going to wait until I see that there are no surprises with players being out of the lineup before I double up on this one. I really feel like this line is a gift and Detroit's 7 game win streak is a bit overrated.
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