Point Blank – March 6, 2017
It’s Game on for the Rockets/Spurs Texas Two-Step…On the ACC – It’s going to be brutal in Brooklyn
College basketball is going to begin dominating this space later in the week, my single favorite cycle of all coming up – yes the conference tournaments will bring far more out of pocket for the portfolio than the Big Dance, with so many unique handicapping factors brought into play. I’ll begin with some early ACC sorting today. But on this night Rockets/Spurs demand the most attention, not only for the game they are about to play, but also how it fits into the NBA balance of power, with Golden State’s sloppiness in the first two post-Durant outings showing that the window has been left open.
Item: Welcome to the NBA’s Texas Two-Step
We may be seeing a lot of Houston/San Antonio in the month of May, the Western Conference standings making it difficult for the Spurs to catch the Warriors for the #1 seed (2.5 games); the Rockets to catch the Spurs for the #2 (five games); or for anyone to catch the Rockets for #3 (five games). So there are various focus points in play, not just from the basketball-on-the-court sense, but in terms of the market as well. The question for the latter as the game first hit the board for the overnights - while San Antonio brings the pedigree, might Houston simply be the better team right now?
The oddsmakers slightly favored the pedigree, sending out the Spurs just a slight a tick above the home court, but the early traders have already made a a counter statement, which I will get to in a moment. First time to get to work on the basketball aspects, because with these two having met three times before Christmas, this is the only head-to-head there will be prior to the second round of the playoffs. To set some perspective let’s go back to those first three encounters, which were all won outright by the road team -
Nov 9 HOU (+10.5) 101-99
Nov 12 SA (-1.5) 106-100
Dec 20 SA (+1) 102-100
You can see how much perceptions have changed based on the price of that first go-round, just two weeks into the season. Not much was expected from the Rockets, who had opened 4-3, including an opening night loss to the Lakers. But that win in San Antonio was a signal of what was to come, and the rematch a couple of nights later was also close. The third clash brought some high drama, the Spurs rallying from 10 down with 4:00 remaining to win in Houston (it was 100-94 with 1:30 remaining before an 8-0 close-out), but that one created some particularly awkward grading – San Antonio shot 12-23 from 3-point range to just 6-38 for the Rockets, yet it was still basketball life-and-death to the final possession.
You will see by those scores that the Spurs won the battle of the pace each time, the three games playing Under by a collective 25.5 points. And more than anything else that is what this one is about -
2017 Pace SPURS ROCKETS
Full-Season 96.8 (#26) 101.9 (#4)
Post-A.S. Break 96.0 (#26) 104.3 (#2)
Gregg Popovich wants to turn this into a grinder, forcing those Houston 3-point shots to come in half-court sets. Mike D’Antoni wants his offense getting into scoring position before the Spurs defense can be ready. By winning the pace battle so far the Spurs have been able to contest enough of those shots, Houston only making 31 of 115 three-point attempts, just 27.0 percent.
That creates a couple of issues – first, is there a pendulum in play? The worst 3-point shooting in the league has come from the Thunder at 32.3, and the best 3-point defense has been by the Warriors at 32.6, so a 27.0 over 115 attempts is a bit of an outlier. Second, if Houston was just 31-115 from what is the team strength, should the Spurs scoreboard advantage be more than a net of six points over 144 minutes? Welcome to the next pendulum question – San Antonio is #5 in rebounding at 51.6 and Houston #12 at 50.3, but the Rockets won the boards in all three head-to-heads, a combined 142-117.
There is a lot to see here, especially when we begin to factor current form. Houston has scored at a sizzling 119.6 PP100 since the All Star break, a rather significant gap down to the #2 team (Miami at 112.4), and while the Spurs have gone 5-0 post-break, it has been done with some coughing and wheezing. They trailed the Pacers, Pelicans and Timberwolves late in the fourth quarter of the last three games, but had the poise and savvy to come away with the win all three times, two of them in OT.
Or at least poise and savvy would be the assumption. And one of the keys to putting yourself in position to beat the game in the long run is to have the discipline to work beyond assumptions…
Item: On those recent San Antonio post-mortems
It would be no secret to long-term readers here that Gregg Popovich is among my favorite sportsmen, and it would be ever so easy to claim those last three wins were the Spurs being who they are. But in taking the time to break the games down a different current was out there – opposing coaches and players more bemoaning their mistakes than giving credit to San Antonio.
It started with Indiana’s Nate McMillan, who saw his team fail to score after going up 99-98 with 1:35 to play, including Monta Ellis missing a pair of FTs with 0:09 remaining - "We played hard -- there's no doubt about that. We gave ourselves a chance to win. At times we just went a little too fast and didn't have that solid execution when we needed to. You've got to make plays down the stretch and get stops and knock down shots. That didn't happen."
Then it was New Orleans only scoring two points over the final 3:30 of regulation before losing in OT on Friday, and despite 19 points and 23 rebounds, DeMarcus Cousins knew where much of the fault was – “We had some costly turnovers, I knew I threw one. It was just bad execution down the stretch.”
But the most interesting takes of all came from the Timberwolves, who led by nine in the fourth quarter on Saturday night. I’ll start with Tom Thibodeau - "San Antonio is a tough team and you have to play great for the entire game - three quarters or three and a half quarters doesn't get it done. You have to play from start to finish and you have to play smart. You can't beat yourself. We didn't finish the way we needed to."
Then to the players, first Karl-Anthony Towns - "We had the lead and the Spurs were waiting for us to have that one moment where we relaxed. We did, and their discipline got them this win." And from Ricky Rubio - "Overall we played a pretty good game until the end, when he had some mistakes and too many turnovers.”
Three flawed teams had the lead vs. the Spurs inside of the final 2:00, with two of those games in San Antonio. Was this really a case of the savvy of the Spurs getting it done, or simply the opposition fumbling it away? The answer is a little of both, of course, but through this cycle it may indeed have been more of the latter that tilted the balance on the scoreboards.
Hence my mode for the evening was to put some #517 Houston (8:35 Eastern) in pocket at +4, a maneuver that has had a lot of company this morning. I would not go at +3.5, but a shopper may find +4 re-appearing over the course of the day. As detailed here last week I have been putting some Rockets Team Total Over in play in every game since the All Star break until the markets catch up, but because the Spurs are so good at setting tempo I will alter the course a bit – they may be good enough to get their preferred pace again, but I’m not certain that they are good enough to win the game, much less establish any breathing room.
Rockets/Spurs will be fun, as will just about anything that takes place from Thursday on in the ACC tournament in Brooklyn. But it is because of how dynamic those brackets are that the handicapper needs to view things a little differently…
Item: On the ACC – It’s going to be Brutal in Brooklyn
How good has the ACC been this season? If we go to the Ken Pomeroy and Jeff Sagarin ratings, each of them have 11 teams from the conference in their Top 50. That is rather special, and consider what the potential could be for Thursday’s round –
NORTH CAROLINA vs. SYRACUSE/MIAMI
LOUISVILLE vs. DUKE
FLORIDA STATE vs. WAKE FOREST/VIRGINIA TECH
NOTRE DAME vs. VIRGINIA
A couple of those are Sweet 16, or possibly even Elite 8 matchups, yet it is only the quarter-finals. But hence a conundrum, and I will bring it into play today, since the tourney starts early on Tuesday (N.C. State/Clemson at Noon Eastern). If you are a Hall of Fame coach, and there are several in this bracket, and your goal is to have your team best positioned to play well in the Big Dance, do you really want to win this thing? The euphoria from cutting down the nets at the Barclay Center on Saturday night might quickly be morphed into the exhaustion in waking up Sunday morning.
Let’s start at the top. I have written often in past years here about the lack of interest Roy Williams shows in this tourney, and having claimed the regular-season crown, there would not appear to be any special reason that the motivation changes this time. But then consider Mike Krzyzewski. One of his prime issues with Duke this season is having much less depth than usual, and the Blue Devils draw would not only mean four games in four days, but the last three games likely vs. Louisville, North Carolina, and then the survivor of the other bracket. Would he really want to put his team through that?
I am going to make this a focus point across various conferences – there are some leagues in which the regular-season champion may already consider it to be mission accomplished, with the league tourney a bit of an inconvenience (Kansas & SMU), while there are also some traditional powers that bring significant motivation to get after it this week (Villanova & Kentucky).
So what about the ACC? I am waiting for the futures prices to get out there this morning, and will update both here, and in the on-running thread, should anything of value appear. There is substantial rake in these offerings, of course, but some times there are edges big enough to overcome it.
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