NBA Odds: 5 over/under picks sure to win
Which NBA over/under bets for the 2014-15 season are sure winners?
Picking over or under on win totals before the season is a tradition in all sports. The time has arrived for taking a look at them in the NBA. The selections below are based on numbers given by www.bovada.lv.
Atlanta Hawks Over 41
The Hawks made the playoffs last season going 38-44. They were 25-21 after 46 games before they lost eight in a row and lost 14 of 15.
Avoid that one bad stretch of play and they probably cross 41 wins last season.
Kyle Korver missed 11 games and Al Horford didn’t play in 53. It was the second straight year Horford sat out a bunch and it was the same injury. There has to be some level of concern.
Atlanta brought back everyone in the core and there’s room for some internal improvement. Any combination of Jeff Teague’s shooting percentage jumping back up to somewhere near the levels of the previous two seasons, having Pero Antic and Mike Scott in the rotation for a larger chunk of games, either of John Jenkins and Dennis Schroder providing additional help in the backcourt or getting positive play from rookie Adrien Payne would be boosts in certain areas.
DeMarre Carroll is coming off his best season on a per minute bases. Nothing that he did was all that out of whack with his previous per 36 numbers. His volume in three-point attempts and percentage were impressive last year and it’s fair to question whether he can keep that up.
The Hawks gave themselves insurance to possible Carroll regression by signing Thabo Sefolosha and Kent Bazemore. They basically need one of these guys to play reasonably well and if more than one does it’s a bonus.
New York Knicks Under 40 1/2
From everything we can tell with Knicks head coach Derek Fisher he’s sticking with a strict two traditional big rotation. If this ends up being the case and he’s not putting on a show, New York will be miserable again this season.
If you have your substitution pattern featuring one of Andrea Bargnani and Amar’e Stoudemire on the court for any significant amount of time it becomes too much to overcome. There’s a lot of ancillary positives and negatives you can look at with this team, but this is the single biggest factor when you examine the Knicks’ win total.
If one of them gets hurt or Fisher shows flexibility in reducing their combined role it changes the prognostication of the team. There’s no evidence to say that will happen. In that case, I’d be shocked to see the Knicks win 35 games.
Houston Rockets Over 49 1/2
I’ve talked about the Rockets at length in a couple of other previous pieces so I won’t go to in depth here. Pretty simple, I don’t think there’s anyway a team with Dwight Howard and James Harden plus a solid supporting cast falls short of 50 wins.
Detroit Pistons Under 35 1/2
Even with Stan Van Gundy taking over the Pistons organization they’re still a couple years away from turning it around.
Andre Drummond is an extremely talented player with a bright future. He has a higher ceiling than almost any other player in the league, but it would be shocking if the 21-year-old reached those heights in his third NBA season.
Detroit’s best three players are still all at the center and power forward positions not capable of playing with each other for an extended period. Brandon Jennings can’t be trusted to play efficient basketball and none of their offseason additions were anything ground breaking. There was no first round pick either.
It would take Van Gundy pulling a miracle for the Pistons to be able to put together a successful season.
Toronto Raptors 48 1/2
A team I believe ends up with the Chicago Bulls as the Cavs biggest challenge in the Eastern Conference.
Toronto enters its second season with essentially the same rotation. He doesn’t get nearly as much credit, but in a way DeMar DeRozan is to the Raptors what LaMarcus Aldridge is to the Portland Trail Blazers. DeRozan was even slightly more productive last season because he got to the free throw line and attempted more threes.
The key is they’re both high usage players and their teams have found a way to build quality offenses around them.
Another positive for the Raptors is they will have Greivis Vasquez and Patrick Patterson for the entire season. In the 617 minutes those two played together Toronto was a +12 net rating.
With a player like DeRozan you need to complement him with ball movement and shooting. This is why he and Rudy Gay didn’t work. DeRozan is the only player on the court you want taking a high volume of mid-range shots. The other four players should be doing the majority of their work from behind the arc or at the rim.
Vasquez doesn’t shoot in the same volume of Terrance Ross, but the percentages are similar and he adds an element of ball handing and creation Ross doesn’t yet posses. Patterson spaces the court better than Amir Johnson is.
There’s nothing wrong with Ross or Johnson, they’re both perfectly fine players, it’s more a matter of fit. The Raptors are an extremely dangerous team that is ready to be unleashed.
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