The NBA Playoffs on Monday night and we will see the Los Angeles Clippers travel to the Toyota Center to take on the Houston Rockets in game 1 of their best-of-seven series. Free Pick to follow. The game has a start time of 9:30 pm (Eastern) and will be televised on TNT. Current Vegas betting odds have Houston listed as 6 point favorites, while the total is set at 212.
Analysis: The Los Angeles Clippers came into the playoffs as the number 3 seed and weren't really happy about having to meet up with the Spurs in round 1, but after taking down the Spurs in 7 games they are now happy to be moving on. Still you have to wonder how much that series took out of them. The Clippers are 28-16 on the road this year. LA Has gone 13-3-1 ATS in their last 17 road games, but just 1-6-1 ATS in their last 8 games following a S.U. win. The Clippers have scored 106.8 ppg on 47.4% shooting overall and 37.3% from long range on the road this year. Defensively they have struggled away from home as they have allowed 102.1 ppg on 45.2% shooting overall and 36.6% shooting from long range.
The Houston Rockets are proving to be a very dangerous team as they have now won 17 of their last 22 games and are comeing off a 4-1 series win over Dallas. Still we don't know how good they are as they were taking on a very mediocre Dallas squad. We shall find out in this series, but the Rockets do have the rest edge as they have been at home for a few days while the Clippers were engaged in a 7 game war with the Spurs. Houston is 33-11 at home for the year. Houston has gone 13-3 ATS in their last 16 when their opponent scores 100 points or more in their previous game and 16-5 ATS in their last 21 home games vs. a team with a winning road record. The Rockets have scored 104.0 ppg on 44.2% shooting overall and 35.4% from long range at home for the year. Defensively they have been decent at home as they have allowed 98.2 ppg on 45.4% shooting overall and 29.0% shooting from long range.
Pick: Im going to look to the Under in this one. Rocket home games have averaged just 202 ppg this year and While Clipper road games have been high scoring i just don't see it here as they will not look to run as much, especially coming off a grueling 7 game series vs the Spurs. The Rockets do play good defense at home and neither team is good from the FT line. I see this one being played around 205 points at most.
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