It does not matter whether you buy
into the "look ahead" theory in sports or not, the fact remains, San
Antonio was definitely looking ahead from New Orleans to tonight! The Spurs
travel home overnight, and after Tony Parkers last second shot helped beat the
Hornets by 4, to face the team that knocked them out of the Western Conference
Finals in early June. When I say knocked out, I mean it. Up two games to none,
the series looked to be all but over for Oklahoma City, but alas, Kevin Durant
and company took over, won four straight and we all know the rest. (If you live
under an "I don't care about the NBA" rock, Lebron and the Heat won
the NBA championship in 5 games).
Spurs/ OKC is the only NBA game
tonight after the cancellation of Brooklyn/ Knicks due to the ongoing flood
cleanup in the area affected by hurricane Sandy. The Spurs will have plenty to
play for in front of their home crowd fans in dreaming of just a sliver of
redemption. They will have to fight off the tired legs that come due to a back
to back, and they will have to overcome an OKC team playing their first contest
of the year. Manu Ginobli probably won't play tonight (downgraded to doubtful
this morning) after sitting out last night, and 4 of 8 preseason games, with a
back issue, although Tony Parker was quoted as saying "I wouldn't be
surprised if he did end up playing".
It may sound like I'm leaning towards
OKC, but that is incorrect! Very few NBA arenas’ give a bigger home court
advantage than the AT&T center. The Spurs only lost 5 games there all of
last year. OKC was the "sexy" pick to possibly stop the Miami/ Lakers
dream NBA Finals matchup, but traded away one of their "glue" guys in
James Harden. We'll have to see how all that plays out over the next few months,
but for now the fact remains they'll have to get used to a new type of game not
having a second unit boasting one of the NBA's top 20 guys. That all being
said/ written, I like the Spurs -2 as my free play of the night in the NBA.
NBA Quick Hitters:
#1: There is a new twitter account
you might want to check out for a laugh, https://twitter.com/FireMikeBrown24
#2: If you're a stat geek, check out
who's number one on John Hollingers page (http://insider.espn.go.com/nba/hollinger/statistics)
in Player Efficiency Rating, Spoiler alert, it's Leandro Barbosa. Wonder if I
could find someone to take the bet he won't finish top 100?
You can Buy David Rudolph's premium picks at ChuckEdel.com right now!
No comments:
Post a Comment