The Portland Trail Blazers will play a fourth home game in a row on Friday night when the Brooklyn Nets will pay them a visit. After Russell recently had his turn, Crabbe is facing an old team, but the Nets are hoping to get a much different result from this reunion.
Nets at Trail Blazers
Spread: Portland -8.5 (-110) at BetDSI Sportsbook
Total: o/u 223 points (-110)
The Nets can’t get anything right in a loss to the Nuggets
The Nets are a long way from home, but even further from relevancy. Occasional good showing this season is quickly darkened by a poor effort, such as it was in Denver, where the Nets didn’t seem to belong on the same court with the Nuggets, losing 112-104. The game was not close as you might think from looking to the score, but a blowout that Brooklyn managed to mask by a late surge from their reserves.
Nothing was going well for the night, and there was no prime effort as the Nets players seemed happy to have broken the losing streak the previous night in Phoenix. They hung around in the first half and appeared lucky to be down just 13 points at half. But then, Denver came out punching in the second half and it was all over. Nikola Jokic scored 41 points, becoming the sixth player to drop 30 or more points against Brooklyn in 11 games. Brooklyn had three active players above 6’8” available: Mozgov, Tyler Zeller, and Jacob Wiley, freshly recalled from G-League. That explains a part of the Denver bigs’ domination, but it was far from their only issue. No effort, no ball movement, no defense. They shot 11-of-35 from the deep and gave up the ball 25 times – a season high. Other than Tyler Zeller, nobody stepped up. It was a lot of waiting for what’s D’Angelo Russell going to do and he struggled. The night in Denver was Russell’s most disastrous effort yet this season. He coughed up the ball eight times, six of which came in his first 15 minutes on the court. There was no ‘next man up’ mentality. To be fair, it was always going to be hard to play in thin air on the back-to-back, but it also seemed that the Nets players already had this excuse ready at the tip-off.
Coach Atkinson was forced to make a change to the starting lineup, as the injuries left them thin in the frontcourt. The Nets downsized, starting Dinwiddie and sliding Crabbe and Carroll to two forward positions. Booker, Allen, and Hollis-Jefferson remain out, so we’re probably going to see a similar lineup again.
Place: Moda Center, Portland, Oregon
Date/Time: Friday, November 10th, 2017. 10:00 PM ET
TV Coverage: NBCSNW, YES
The Blazers can’t find good rhythm against the Grizzlies
If anything can be said about the Portland Trail Blazers than it’s that they play exciting games. After losing to the Jazz in overtime and winning two close calls against the Thunder and the Lakers, they’ve lost to Memphis 97-98 on Tuesday evening. Not only they’ve suffered a stinging home loss to what seems to be a potential playoff spot rival, but they’ve played poorly, unable to find the offense they need to win at a higher rate. They fell to 6-5 and have some easy games ahead, so it’s not like they are in a bad position, but game-wise, they are not at the same level as they hoped.
It starts with their face of the franchise, Damian Lillard. Already overrated, he’s having a down year so far. The points and the percentages are down and the turnovers are up. The game against the Grizzlies didn’t help the matter, as he scored 12 points, shot 4-of-16 on field goals, and didn’t get a single three to drop. 6 assists were offset by 5 turnovers. You may want to attribute this to a usual Conley treatment, but he’s clearly not on the same level this season no matter who’s guarding him. McCollum tried to pick up the pieces, giving the Rip City a chance by himself. He connected on 14-of-26 shots to score 36 points. McCollum hit four treys, while the rest of the Blazers hit only two combined. The Grizzlies played good, active defense that diverted the edge of Portland’s attack to the sides, making them round around the defense rather than penetrate it. As all the Blazers guards depend on dribbling the ball, they were unable to move the ball quickly enough to find cracks, leaving them in short clock situations that the guards were forced to handle. Besides the two starting guards, only other players that scored more than 6 points were the backup guards, Turner and Napier. This brings me to another disappointment of this season – Jusuf Nurkic. He’s nothing the Blazers had hoped for. He has good hands and the rumbling body, but can finish in traffic and is flatfooted on defense. Against the Grizzlies, Nurkic shot 3-of-9 for 6 points and grab 5 boards. For the season, he’s just 47 percent – a bad figure considering that most of his shots come directly under the rim. Only Lillard has more than his 3.1 turnovers, and he doesn’t handle the ball much.
The Blazers played without Al-Farouq Aminu, who is expected to be sidelined another 2-3 weeks with a right ankle sprain. Deep rotation guy Meyers Leonard is expected back in about a week.
Brooklyn Nets at Portland Trail Blazers Game Trends & Prediction
The Nets have lost five of six since the improbable win in Cleveland. They did manage to pull out a backdoor cover in Denver, aided by a large spread, so they are actually on a mini two-game win streak against the spread, as funny as it sounds. The last two games also featured a lower-than-expected number of points, but it’s just because the Nets games rarely have lines below 220 points. Brooklyn is 6-5 ATS this season, but 2-4 in the last six. They are also 6-4 against the over/under.
Portland is on a six-game homestand, playing their fourth game in Moda Center. They won two and lost one, but managed to cover only against the usual punching bags when it comes to betting – the Thunder. It was also the only time they’ve earned money for their backers in the last seven games – a further justification that they aren’t playing at the desired level. They are 4-7 overall on total points, 2-5 at home, and the last two stayed below the set lines.
Admi-Rank: Don’t be fooled by the up arrow for the Nets, it’s more of a product of the previous demise than the real trend. The Blazers are much the better side here, despite being just an average team – this speaks volumes about how bad the Nets are.
Bad teams that shoot many threes can get hot and surprise you if you look away, so the Blazers should not lose focus (especially not on the defensive side). Still, with all the inside missing for the Nets, not even Crabbe going after his old team will help them stay close if the Blazers manage to shake off the bad performance. The Nets are no Grizzlies when it comes to protecting their paint, so Trail Blazers should have a much easier path to the rim.
The bookies know it, and despite the Blazers playing close, they’ve set a large handicap, favoring the home team by 8.5 points in this one. While the value would be nice if it would be larger, it’s still acceptable for me, as I’m going with a fair number or 10.5 points of an advantage. The total is slightly less than I excepted, probably a reaction to recent Nets unders, but I’m not interested in it either way, so my only pick for you here is the Portland to win by 9 or more.
My Pick: Portland -8.5 (-110)
Total: (no total points wager here)
