NBA Basketball Preview: San Antonio Spurs at Cleveland Cavaliers

Added on Mar 02, 2011 by Jack Thurman in

NBA

The best and worst of the NBA face off in Cleveland on Wednesday night as the Cavaliers host the San Antonio Spurs. Spurs coming off a lopsided loss at Memphis and will be without Tony Parker once again for this game. Cavs have shown more competitive fire after their record losing streak, but will play this game without Baron Davis and Antawn Jamison.

San Antonio Spurs at Cleveland Cavaliers
March 2, 2011 4:05 PM Pacific

Ordinarily we’d like to take a position on the San Antonio Spurs coming off a loss and playing in the second of back to back games–they’re 8-3 ATS in that spot this season. Last night’s drubbing at Memphis, however, demonstrated that life without Tony Parker in the lineup might not be as easy as first anticipated. This is something of a ‘throwaway’ game for San Antonio before returning to Texas for a four game home stand with two huge games on deck against Miami and the Los Angeles Lakers. Given the age of the team, it’s also the kind of game that they could use to give Tim Duncan and Manu Ginobilli fewer minutes than usual.

As we had predicted during the Cavs horrendous losing run, they’ve become a very solid pointspread team of late. They’ve actually picked up a few outright wins here and there but they’re covering spreads on an almost nightly basis. As we said at the time its the confluence of several factors–the public completely dismissing the team, other teams almost completely looking past them and linesmakers ‘shading’ numbers in their favor. At the same time the team is getting healthier and role players forced into more minutes due to injury are getting more comfortable in their new assignments and gaining confidence. Cleveland has covered the number in four straight games and since February 1 is 8-2-1 against the spread.

The Spurs aren’t a team that will ‘phone in’ many games but given their current injury situation, the opponent they play tonight and the two huge games they have up next we think this is a spot where they’ll ‘play down’ to their opposition. We don’t really see the Cavs pulling the outright win (though they have beaten the Lakers, Clippers and Knicks outright on this floor in the past month) we do expect them to keep it within the generous pointspread.

Bet Cleveland Cavaliers +9 over San Antonio Spurs