This Week: 6-12
Wednesday: 2-4
Horrible week. Will probably play Thursday and take the rest of the week off.
Miami Heat +1.5 @ Orlando Magic 195.5
In the first meeting between two of the East's top teams, Wade led the Heat with 26 points outscoring the Magic 28-10 in the 3rd en route to a 96-70 win. This was the Heat's first home game as well. Fast forward, say almost a month later, Orlando jumped on the Heat and controlled major minutes of the game with a 15-6 spurt in the last 4 minutes of the pay off round to seal the win 104-95.
Both games have contrasting feel to it with Miami winning the 3rd Quarter SU/ATS as the only thing that is consistent. Bosh and James barely made scoring impact in Game 1 and doubled it up on the second game. Outside Dwight, Orlando could barely get anyone going in the 1st game after being allowed only 30% in FG. The second game went very well with JJ Reddick and Brandon Bass responding well en route to a team FG percentage of 51. Miami shot 40% in both games which tells you more about the Magic's team defense.
The more I look at both games, the more I'm enticed to play the UNDER 195.5. Miami plays better defense against the better teams in the league. They are two steps better at home but can't be denied that they are still a force on the road. Let's check the numbers.
Miami is 10th in the league with the least Pace Factor at 93.2 to Orlando's 93.9 (13th). Pace is the number of possession a team has at an average, if we use the Effective Field Goal percentage to guage their points per possession. We more or less get 56% for Orlando and 55% for Miami. In a perfect world, that's like both teams scoring 100-106 points. That's 206 total points easy, which is around 10 points above the set total (originally opened at 197).
Miami is 4th in the league in terms of defensive efficiency allowing 99.5 points per 100 possessions to Orlando's (5th in the league) 100. If we factor each team's pace we'd probably get somewhere around 92-93 points. That's 185 total points which is now the opposite when we use both teams offense.
Orlando is 10-13-1 O/U at home to Miami's 12-13-0 on the road which doesn't tell us much. So we can get a better sample out of this, I checked out Orlando's stat against the top 10 teams with the least allowed in points per game. Orlando is 3-12 O/U against them. Miami on the other hand is 9-7 O/U. Both are playing after 2 days so they should have a lot of energy for defense.
Last 5 games for the Magic totals at 196 to the Heat's 199. Their home-road average looks like this: 195 for Miami, 193 for Orlando. Overall, Miami and Orlando games both averages 195 ppg. If we take everything in, it looks like we'll see them fall close to the total now at 195.5.
Put little weight on most of these stats since both teams is different from who they are now. In their last game, Miami just suffered their 3rd loss in a row and Orlando is playing with a different set of players now. Orlando is 13-10 O/U with the new guys and 12-10-1 ATS. Miami now has a definitive roles for their guys and just about even in O/U after the loss to Orlando and making that big December run.
Right now, I'm leaning on the UNDER 195.5 and probably make a play in the second half for the sides. Notice that there's always one quarter where one team fails to score past 20.
BOL.