NBA Odds: The Denver Nuggets visit the New York Knicks on Sunday in a game that has an early start time of 1 pm Eastern Time. Both teams have struggled to start the season as the Nuggets lost five of their first six games while the Knicks dropped six of their first eight. Let’s take a look at this Sunday matinee and NBA odds.
Nuggets Losing SU and ATS
Not only are the Denver Nuggets losing straight up, they are losing against the spread. Denver dropped five of their first six games and they went 1-5 ATS. The team is playing no defense as they are next to last in the NBA, allowing 108 points per game. Their offense isn’t good enough to keep them in games as they are scoring just 99.2 points per contest. The 1-5 start for the team was their worst since the 1998-1999 season. Head coach Brian Shaw has a tough job ahead of him this season.
The offense should improve as the team does have some players who can score in Ty Lawson, Kenneth Faried and Aarron Affalo. And they also still have Daniel Gallinari who used to be an excellent scorer.
Knicks Continue to be Overrated
New York has a team president who is considered one of the best coaches in NBA history in Phil Jackson and a superstar scorer in Carmelo Anthony. What the team doesn’t have is many wins this season. They lost six of their first eight games and they were 2-6 ATS. That included going 0-4 ATS at home.
The team has not taken to the triangle offense installed under head coach Derek Fisher. Anthony is really the only scoring option for this team until they get Andrea Bargnani and Jose Calderon back in the lineup. Slow starts are nothing new for this team as they went 7-12 in 2011, 7-13 in 2012 and 5-15 last season.
They simply have to get some help for Anthony who is averaging 26.5 points per game in their wins and 18.2 points per game in their losses. Jackson said that the team simply has to start playing better and not worry about the triangle offense.
“It’s not anything. It’s a system. It’s simple basketball. Just play the game,” Jackson said. “We’re over the triangle. Let’s get to business and play the right way.”
Series Notes
The Denver Nuggets have won six of the last ten meetings including two of the last three. The teams split their two meetings last season with the Knicks winning 117-90 at home and the Nuggets winning 97-95 in Denver. Both games went under the total. The Knicks have won six of the last ten at home in this series with six of the last eight going over.
NBA Picks
Neither of these teams is playing much defense so we’ll look for this game to go over the total.
