Underdog + Under, Favorite + Over
...Could be worth 1/4 of your original wager today, fellas.
For those who don't want to read the rest of my write-up, here's what my card will look like tonight:
3 units LA Lakers +3.5
1 unit Lakers/Cavaliers Under 195.5
2 units Denver Nuggets -9.5
And a $60 parlay on the sides and totals:
$30 Lakers, Under, Nuggets, Over.
$30 - Lakers, Under, Nuggets, Under. Just in case the Clippers don't score enough points tonight.
The Lakers/Cavaliers game pit 2 of the league's best defenses against eachother. The Lakers are 1st in FG defense and the Cavaliers are 3rd. Their last meeting from a month ago resulted in a low scoring affair. You can go as far back as 5 years in this series and the undermining theme remains the same; the Under is 8-2 in that half decade span. No one could seriously be considering the Over for tonight's this matchup.
For those who haven't noticed by now, there is a disturbing trend for TNT Thursday games: underdogs win SU & favorites win in blow-out fashion.
Here is a link to where you can review this year's previous TNT Thursday games. ~~~~~~~>
LINK
All you need to know is, if you think a certain underdog can win straight-up, you can bet on that team with confidence knowing that they will pull off the upset. And if you think that a certain underdog have no chance of winning the game, you can bet with confidence knowing that the favored team will win by a blow-out margin.
Based on fundamental handicapping, some educated guesses, situational confluences, and my own esoteric player-vs-player matchup diagnosis, i'll explain why i like the Lakers and Nuggets tonight.
The Lakers lost big to the Cavaliers on Christmas day. Christmas day fell on a Friday in 2009; for NBA league scheduling that equates to 12 hours of primetime exposure with 5 games on tap. Its not by accident that one of the games featured the best out of the Eastern and Western conference; and considering that Ohio had only one relevent NFL team and LA have none... this game probably sparked the most viewership on that day. When you lose big in your own venue in a primetime spot, i don't think you forget something like that. Revenge factors might be overrated for some games but this matchup is ideal because, once again, these two teams meet under primetime limelights.
For a matchup of two good or evenly matched teams, its just a matter of defining which side or shooters get hot & which side is cold. This is where we try and make educated guesses, if not a blatant coin-flip on who gets the better of who. You guess right, you get your winner.
Here's what we already know. Kobe certainly isn't 100%. But there is no way he clocks less than 40 minutes tonight; not against King James, not when you have the Knicks on deck the next night, not even if he has some recurring injuries or back spasm aches. Superstar players seem to have a "turbo-bost" or "over-drive" button that they can turn on in the 4th Quarter. Players like LeBron, Wade and even Kevin Durant has these innate talents and we've seen 'em in action. If you think LeBron will be on his A-game tonight, then you definitely like Cleveland giving points. I can't fully recall the game on Christmas day (i wasn't home and only watched part of the game) but LeBron was 11-26 shooting and yet his team won by a wide margin. The scoreboard dictated the outcome as it seemed the Lakers sucked shooting the ball that day (Kobe was 12-36).
So? Who's hot and who's not tonight in "The Q"?
Here is where my biorhythm/ephemerides ratings charts gives me a glimpse into the future, even if the grades are only 50% correct.