Point Blank – March 2
What a “Bettor Better Know” – The Weekend in Review
The Weekend that Was on the NBA and NCAA hardwoods, and some key developments that you can incorporate into your own handicapping portfolio, in order to gain some major edges on the games to come...
Item: Why some Senior Days don’t work (and why Syracuse just might tonight…)
There will be special Senior Day celebrations across the NCAA boards this week, and from this corner there will be the usual focus on finding key settings in which they can provide an edge. Some of those games are likely to fall “In the Sights…” But one that you must absolutely steer away from are those settings in which the teams doing the celebrating are favored in double figures. It can be mission accomplished for them well before your own investment goals have been achieved, and in fact the team you bet on could actually be working against you in the final stages.
Saturday brought several examples of that peril. Maryland closed vs. Michigan with Tevor Anzmann, Spencer Barks, Varum Ram and Jacob Susskind on the court for the final minute, despite the pointspread outcome being within a basket of changing. Virginia finished vs. Virginia Tech with Marial Shayok, Maleek Frazier and Rob Vozenilek in action, while still being under the spread vs. the Hokies. Just to name a few.
And so it goes. For many big favorites, the ideal way to send out the senior starters is to get them off the court to a major ovation in the final minutes. And for some, the ideal way to get the managers or senior walk-ons a fitting tribute from the fans is to have them in the game as those final moments tick down. You don’t want to be in the position of that celebrating going on when you still need another basket or two, or a stop or two on defense, to cash your ticket. So just don’t go there.
If you do want to make that motivation work, consider Monday night being a little different than usual at Syracuse, where Rakeem Christmas should get a big send-out from the fans because of the Orange post-season ban. There are no other scholarship seniors that Jim Boeheim has to give any playing time to, so this becomes their version of an NCAA tournament game. The value is not great (+6 is needed), but if you want to root for your own pockets while watching the game it at least steers you to a direction. And while the Syracuse depth is indeed a factor for this quick turnaround, note that Virginia was pushed enough by Virginia Tech on Saturday that the Cavalier starters had to log 165 out of 200 floor minutes.
Item: Monty Williams had a darn good week* (* - or did the markets have a darn bad one?)
Last Saturday Monty Williams and his Pelicans suffered a couple of tough early breaks at Miami, losing Anthony David after 8:53 of playing time, and Ryan Anderson after 6:54. Neither has been seen on the court since. Yet fast forward to this morning’s standings and they show New Orleans at 32-27, in the hunt in the Western Conference playoff chase, and proud owners of a five-game win streak. Four of those successes were outright as underdogs, and in professional pointspread sports, four consecutive wins as an underdog, or even four straight when in the role, interspersed around games as chalk, is exceedingly rare. It begs exploration.
How did it happen? Let’s start by giving credit to Williams and the remaining players on the roster first. They kept their focus on the task at hand, and played both hard and smart. It has been the calm leadership of Williams that has helped to set the tone, keeping the team on an even keel even though the playoff talk is getting out there - “It's not that I don't recognize the big picture, I just don't talk about it a lot. I think about it often. From the way I approach it, it's got to be the phase. I think it allows us to focus on what's important right now and I think everything else will take care of itself. … I know the emotions that go with all that and I know the steadiness you have to have going down the stretch. And that's why it's a day-by-day thing with me. I think it'll serve us well to handle our daily business. And hopefully that will help us get to where we want to go."
When investing money behind a team, that is the kind of leadership you are looking for. With Davis on the way back soon, the playoffs are indeed within reach, although tonight’s setting is one in which the NBA did them no favors – from the altitude of Denver directly into Dallas, losing an hour in the time zone transition along the way, creates a difficult challenge. Hey, they have been winning outright as dogs so what is the big deal? But that takes us to the other part of that recent run…
Was it really Williams and his team overcoming the odds against them, or were the odds themselves wrong? In making the Pelicans home underdogs to Brooklyn and Miami, was it a market miss-read? Yes, Davis is a special talent, and had he not been injured he would have been in the MVP discussion. But counting the early exit vs. Miami, and the 11 games he has missed completely, New Orleans checks in at 7-5 SU and 8-4 ATS. There is meaning to that.
Starting with that win at Miami last Saturday, the Pelicans have beaten the spread by 41.5 points They have done a lot of things right. But there has also been a significant degree of market error involved in that tally, and it needs to be filed away accordingly.
Item: Make sure you note Tony Parker’s Saturday night
After detailing the “State of the Spurs’ in Friday’s column, San Antonio closed the rodeo road trip with wins and covers over Sacramento and Phoenix, the latter by a resounding 101-74 count. And while that will create a takeaway for many that all is well again, especially with a soft schedule cycle ahead to continue the theme, you need take a hard look at Tony Parker’s performance on Saturday night.
Friday’s analysis focused on Gregg Popovich’s take on Parker, and how he must be near his past level of the Spurs are going to advance beyond April. Yet for as much as the rest of the team dominated the Suns, Parker turned in a 3-13 shooting night, with two assists, no rebounds and no steals. They won without him, which they can do vs. the Suns, but not against more substantial competition. Parker has played on back-to-back nights twice since the All Star break, making only 3-17 shots in those games.
Now the schedule falls way off – the Spurs only host the Kings and Nuggets over the next six days, one of the easier weeks any team faces this season (perhaps the NBA rewarding them because of the difficulty of the rodeo trip). The next back-to-back is not until March 17-18. Could this provide the kind of down-time that Parker needs to get back to full health? Or is there just not enough left in the tank, since the All Star break did not provide the expected boost in freshness. It is a storyline the savvy handicapper should be following closely. As is one involving one of Pops disciples…
Item: Mike Budenholzer, and game management
Two months ago there was a Monday take on the emergence of Atlanta – “The Hawks, re-visited (did Mike Budenholzler already have a Master’s Degree)” which focused on the X’s and O’s acumen the NBA’s Coach of the Year in waiting had developed while learning under Popovich. But now we are seeing even more – some “team” and “season” game-management concepts as well.
Budenholzer was facing the end of a back-to-back at Miami on Saturday night in which he was not going to have Al Horford (who just became a father), and possibly DeMare Carroll because of a shoulder injury. He decided to not risk Carroll, and to sit Jeff Teague and Pero Antic as well, enabling that quartet to all get three consecutive days off. Budenholzer characterized it as - “Just working our way through the season, and trying to keep us in a good place health-wise.” And because the team is so well-schooled, they went out and beat the Heat 93-91 anyway. But it has been more than just an episode of giving some players a game off; it is also in the way he has been handling recent play on the court as well.
The Hawks have firm control of the top seed in the East, so the closing 24 games do not need to have any more possessions than necessary – it is just win and move on, especially since they hope to still be playing in June. So pay particular attention to that 5-0 run to the Under since the All Star break, games that have fallen 72.5 points below the market expectations, a full 14.5 per game. The math would be even better had the win at Miami not turned into a late scramble, with 20 points hitting the board in the final 1:25. Budenholzer has geared down, a savvy move on his part, and also a savvy move for the handicapper to acknowledge.
Item: The Eye Test - BYU’s win at Gonzaga did not look like an upset
I am not as high on Gonzaga’s Big Dance chanes as many around the sports betting and Mediaverse world seem to be. Mark Few’s team is deep and well-balanced, and as always plays smart basketball. But it is a rotation of good players without NBA upsides, and the athleticism of the big guys will become an issue when they have to face players of their own size. That means time for some perspective on that loss to Brigham Young on Saturday night, a late result that some of you may have only seen the final score flash. It would seem to indicate that the Cougars made some major things happen to pull the upset, but in truth that was not the case.
BYU played a good game, not a great one. Gonzaga shot a little better (43.9 percent to 42.4), and won the boards by three, while the Cougars had three fewer turnovers. The floor games were relatively even, and BYU won despite making only 16-29 free throws, after connecting 77.7 percent coming in. Leading scorer Tyler Haws produced less than half of his 21.9 average, scoring 10 points on 3-11 shooting. Third leading scorer Anson Winder (13.3) had just four points on a 1-4 night. The Cougars played well, but not their best, and not the level one would have expected it would take to win in Spokane. Yet they never trailed.
File that away for a potential rematch at the Orleans Arena in Las Vegas this weekend. While Gonzaga revenge would certainly attract market attention, and weigh heavily in the back rooms as the line is being set, note that BYU would likely go into that game still needing to win to make it into the NCAA field. The Bulldogs will have the pride to bring it, but it may not mean any real edge in intensity for the setting, since the Cougars will have their tourney hopes on the line.
Item: Xavier Rathan-Mayes crashes, takes FSU with him, and why extremes can often be ignored
Last Thursday there was a column that detailed just how difficult it was going to be to break down the Wednesday results in the usual Post Mortem processes, with so many eye-opening results from that board. One of them dealt with that remarkable end-game run from Florida State’s Xavier-Rathan Mayes, who scored 26 points over a period of 3:34, rallying his team from down by 18 at Miami to an eventual 81-77 defeat. And the key to grading the result was broken down this way –
“But what the hell do we do with the power ratings? Florida State does not necessarily get an upgrade, because this will not happen again. The Miami defense does not have to get a downgrade, because on many of those shots there was not a whole lot more the Hurricanes could have done. It was a sequence that defies comprehension, and may be one in which comprehension is not necessarily needed going forward.”
Sometimes that is what you have to do - simply acknowledge with a tip of the cap, and then largely ignore. How did Rathan-Mayes and the Seminoles follow up against Louisville? They were whipped 81-59 on their own court in Tallahassee, falling to the spread by 17 points. Rathan-Mayes was 5-16 from the field, missing all five triples. What went up, came crashing right back down. That happens, and in these days of the more extreme results getting higher levels of media attention (especially "social"), it can not help but impact the marketplace.
Which then takes us to the Monday morning Post Mortems, and another game that requires some delicacy in doing the charting…
Item: Tom Izzo has covered eight straight vs. Bo Ryan
That is quite a headline, isn’t it? And given that Michigan State won six of those games outright, it looks like there is plenty of meat on the bone, especially given that the Spartan advantage against the market expectations stands at 53.5 points through that cycle, a healthy 6.7 per game. So has Izzo figured out how to handle Wisconsin?
If you saw Sunday’s game, you know the answer to that. State was never in the hunt in the second half, trailing by as many as 22 points, still down by 19 at the 6:58 mark, and by 13 at 0:45. But the game gets logged forever as an MSU cover, which is why there are constant warnings on this page about attaching too much weight to ATS results as being the proper definition of an outcome. Yes, the Spartans can play Wisconsin tougher than anyone, since the Badger patience will not frustrate them as much as it can other teams, and part of Sunday’s cover is a tribute to an Izzo team playing out the full 40 minutes, even when not having any chance to win. But this time there was a hint of Rathan-Mayes in the outcome.
Bryn Forbes is a good shooter, with his 45.7 percent from 3-point range among the nation’s best. But Forbes was only averaging 8.9 ppg heading into Sunday. In Madison he knocked down 8-9 from the field for 21 points, including a perfect 5-5 from 3-point range, and it was that shooting extreme, including the spread-deciding trey with 0:08 remaining, that made the cover possible. Izzo is indeed having a good ATS run against Ryan, but on Sunday the merit behind the outcome belonged the other way.
Item: VCU, without Briante Weber (and the NCAA Stat of the Week)
It was about a month ago that the take “Briante Weber (VCU) is better than you may think” made this page, and the bottom line for the Rams has been a 4-4 SU and 3-5 ATS run without him, with three of the wins coming in games in which they were double-figure favorites. When it was time to step up in a pair of key Atlantic 10 games last week, they came up frustratingly short each time, falling 67-63 at Richmond in double OT, and then losing 59-55 at home vs. Dayton on Saturday.
It would be easy to chart those losses as merely bad shooting – VCU was 37-111 from the field. That is bad. Yet to a degree, that is also who the Rams are, a collection of athletes that scramble hard in Shaka Smart’s presses, but are not nearly as adept at knocking down shots. And those numbers also reflect the kind of shots that were taken, something that is much different without Weber helping the defense to be so disruptive. Richmond and Dayton only turned the ball over 26 times in 90 floor minutes, and each had more assists that turnovers. That forced VCU to score from half-court sets, which is absolutely not a team strength. How dramatic was the impact of those teams taking care of the ball so well? Try this one –
Fast Break Points:
Richmond 10
VCU 0
Dayton 9
VCU 0
A category that the Rams would usually own brought them a -19 in those two games, negating the fact that VCU was +11 in all other scoring categories. For a team coached by Smart to not get a single fast-break point over 90 minutes is astounding. But this is who they are right now, and you need to continue to adjust accordingly.
In the Sights…
Look for some sluggish legs in Brooklyn tonight. Golden State is at the end of the toughest travel cycle of the Warrior season, a sixth straight road game, and the fourth in five nights, with only Tuesday off before taking the court again at home vs. Milwaukee. As such, it was a surprise that Steve Kerr chased yesterday’s game at Boston the way that he did, rallying from 26 points down to get the win. It led to Draymond Green going 43:46, Klay Thompson 38:17 and Stephen Curry 37:38. That shows that Kerr is not taking anything lightly, and given that the home court for a potential Finals matchup with Atlanta is in play, there may not be any letting down tonight.
While Golden State shows an obvious sluggish aspect to this setting, for Brooklyn it may be every bit as bad, albeit more subtle. The Nets have not played at home since February 6, concluding a stretch of eight straight on the road, including five post-break spread over three time zones. But they are thrown into the awkward setting of only getting one day to acclimate back to being back at home, and in their own time zone, after playing at Houston on Friday and Dallas on Saturday. They will bring heavy legs as well.
How to best take advantage? The First Half Under 104.5 (looks like there is a shot of a 105) is the most logical path. Expect some lethargy from each side at the outset, and by making the early stages the focus, it takes any potential late-game scrambling out of play.