NBA Wednesday will see a marquee matchup of conference heavyweights as the Chicago Bulls travel to take on the San Antonio Spurs. The game is slated for a 9 p.m. start time and it will be televised nationally on ESPN. Currently the odds for this game have the Spurs favored by 1.5 points and the total is sitting at 193.5 points. A bigtime matchup between bigtime teams could have serious implications on Wednesday.
Free Analysis: One of the hottest teams in the NBA, the San Antonio Spurs won 12 of their last 13 games heading into the All-Star break. They've won 13 of 14 games at home this season and currently sit in second place in the Western Conference. The Spurs could improve on that greatly with seven straight games at home, which starts tonight. However, the team is banged up a bit and will have to deal with several tough matchups during that stretch, including tonight's game against the Chicago Bulls. The Spurs (24-10) held a 3.5-game lead in the Southwest Division over both Dallas and Houston in what seems to be an all-Texas division. San Antonio, who obviously has played well at home this season, just went 8-1 on a road trip right before the All-Star break as well. "Being at home, we don't want to take anything for granted. It doesn't mean much if you don't play competitively," coach Gregg Popovich said. "We competed well and played together. We've got to duplicate that at home." The Spurs are still not going to have Manu Ginobili back from his injured oblique, which has sidelined him for the last three games. They'll also have a pretty limited bench as Kawhi Leonard, Gary Neal and Tiago Splitter (calf) will be game-time decisions. T.J. Ford, should play in tonight's game, especially with as many injuries as the Spurts are currently dealing with. If he returns, he'd likely draw the difficult task of trying to contain Bulls All-Star Derrick Rose. Good luck there. Rose helped the Bulls improve to 28-8 overall with a 99-95 win over New Orleans on Tuesday. He finished with 32 points and scored six of the game's final eight to help his team rally from a late four-point deficit. "We definitely held it together. Other teams I guess would have folded," Rose said. "We played toward the end I think the best defense we played throughout the whole game. We rebounded the ball, made great plays on the ball. We gave ourselves a chance." The win allowed the Bulls to stay at the top in the Eastern Conference, where they are a clear-cut second best team behind Miami. The win over New Orleans also saw them improve to 5-1 when fielding the starting lineup of Rose, Luol Deng, Joakim Noah, Carlos Boozer and Richard Hamilton. That's a pretty good starting five, and the Bulls would probably be holding down the top spot by themselves if all five could be healthy enough to start the majority of their games. Rose scored 33 at San Antonio way back on Nov. 17, 2010. Tony Parker, who won the All-Star skills challenge this weekend, had a team-best 21 points in that game and has averaged 22.3 on 59.2 percent shooting over his last three matchups with the Bulls. Even more so, when Parker plays the Bulls at home he's on fire, averaging 23.0 points and shooting 63.8 percent in his last three home games versus Chicago. Not bad. Rose likes playing against the Spurs just as much, as the reigning league MVP has is averaging 34.0 points and shooting 59.0 percent in his last three games against the Spurs. San Antonio has won 10 of 12 games against Chicago at home in the series.
Free Pick: I like the Spurs in this matchup being at home. They have been on fire lately and have really played well against the Bulls at home in their series. This is a huge matchup with bigtime stars and being on ESPN, it will probably be a pretty close game. Contests like this are often called pretty closely and the teams are pretty even, although Ginobli won't play. San Antonio has only lost one game at home this season while the Bulls have won 14 of 20 games on the road this season. I'll take the home team by less than a bucket.
Free Picks: Bulls at Spurs Betting
Spurs home after 9 game road trip and Statement game for Bulls against top team in West plus other factors NBA bettors need to know about Bulls at Spurs (Wednesday, February 29, 2012) from Pregame.com - Including predictions from Stephen Nover and analysis from host Marco D'Angelo.