NBA Betting Free Picks: Orlando @ Atlanta
Added on May 08, 2010 by Jack Thurman in
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Busy weekend at sportsbooks with baseball in full swing, the NBA and NHL playoffs underway and a big UFC betting card on Saturday night. We’ll take a look at a NBA betting opportunity in the Eastern Conference series between the Atlanta Hawks and Orlando Magic. The Magic won and covered the first two games of the series in Orlando, and now the action shifts to the Phillips Arena in Atlanta for Games 3 and 4.
Orlando Magic at Atlanta Hawks
May 8, 2:05 PM Pacific
From a historical perspective, there’s a good case to be made for the hometown Hawks in Game 3. This is, of course, a ‘must win’ game as everyone knows that no NBA team has ever come back from an 0-3 deficit to win a series. NBA teams in this spot–returning home in a 7 game series down 0-2–are historically a 63% SU winner in game 3. Having said that, we think this is just a lousy matchup for Atlanta. The Hawks needed 7 games to get rid of injury depleted Milwaukee, who played without their primary low post scoring threat and interior defender in Andrew Bogut. If they couldn’t exploit the Bucks deficiency on the inside, their ability to deal with a monster like Dwight Howard in the paint is very problematic. Howard had a huge game in Game 2 with 29 points and 17 rebounds.
The flip side is that much was made of Dwight Howard’s relative lack of productivity during the Magic’s first round sweep of Charlotte. The Bobcats obviously didn’t have a player who could defend Howard straight up, so they decided to use a strategy similar to the infamous ‘Hack-a-Shaq’ defense. The Bobcats do have a number of big bodies, and they used this rotation to foul Howard and take him out of his game. To some extent it worked, as his productivity was down during the series but the net result was a Magic sweep. Atlanta doesn’t have that luxury, and the result so far is a dominant series from Howard. We look for more of the same in Atlanta. The Magic have now won 12 straight dating back to the regular season, covering 11 of those games. They’ve had little trouble with Atlanta in recent years, with a 10-4 SU/ATS record in head to head play including a 4-2 SU/ATS mark on the road. We’ll back the Magic as a small road favorite and look for them to sweep the series.
Bet Orlando -2 over Atlanta
