{"id":11755,"date":"2010-12-21T18:52:02","date_gmt":"2010-12-21T23:52:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/?p=11755"},"modified":"2010-12-21T18:52:02","modified_gmt":"2010-12-21T23:52:02","slug":"nba-picks-ats-milwaukee-bucks-at-l-a-lakers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/nba-picks-ats-milwaukee-bucks-at-l-a-lakers-11755\/","title":{"rendered":"NBA Picks ATS: Milwaukee Bucks at L.A. Lakers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Milwaukee Bucks at L.A. Lakers
\nDecember 21st, 2010 at 10:35 PM EST
\nOpening Line:\u00a0 L.A. -12
\nCurrent Line:\u00a0 L.A. -12
\nOpening Total: 189
\nCurrent Total: 189
\nOpening Moneyline:\u00a0 L.A. -1500 \/ Milwaukee +950
\nCurrent Moneyline:\u00a0 L.A. -1200 \/ Milwaukee +800<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"
Jennings broke a bone in his foot and is out for 4 weeks<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

NBA oddsmakers have set the spread wide tonight, apparently taking into account Milawukee’s poor play of late, as they have dropped their past three games to Portland (by 26), Utah (by 9) and San Antonio (by 2).\u00a0 The Lakers, conversely, are riding a five game winning streak and have won 9 of their last 10 to pull themselves within 1.5 games of 2nd seeded Dallas.<\/p>\n

It’s going to be very tough for the Bucks to win without their floor general, Brandon Jennings<\/strong>, who recently was sidelined for at least four weeks after fracturing a bone in his left foot.\u00a0 Milwaukee, as mentioned, lost by 26 points in their first outing without Jennings, looking confused and disorientated on offense without Jennings at the helm.<\/p>\n

The Lakers finished an Eastern Conference road trip with a 120-110 victory against the Raptors.\u00a0 They swept the road trip and got huge contributions from their bench, led by Andrew Bynum, who recently returned to the lineup.\u00a0 He hasn’t been starting but that may change tonight.<\/p>\n

Some betting trends:\u00a0 Milwaukee has lost 11 of their last 16 games and are 1-7 on the road in their past 8 road games.\u00a0 They have lost their last 5\u00a0 to the Lakers and are 1-8 in their last 9 in L.A.\u00a0 They are 5-1-1 ATS in their last 7 road games against L.A. Lakers and the total has gone UNDER in 5 of their last 7 road games against the Lakers.<\/p>\n

L.A. has won their last five games and the total has gone UNDER in 13 of their last 17 games.\u00a0 The total has also gone UNDER in 4 of their last 5 home games.\u00a0 They have won 22 of their past 25 games at home and are 2-5 ATS in their last 7 at home.\u00a0 They are 1-5-1 ATS in their last 7 home games against the Bucks.<\/p>\n

Last game between the teams the Lakers won 118-107.\u00a0 That night, both Kobe Bryant and Brandon Jennings scored 31, and the Bucks still lost; tonight without Jennings it is going to be very difficult to keep up with the Lakers’ scoring.<\/p>\n

Some key matchups to watch tonight:
\n
\nAndrew Bogut vs. Pau Gasol \/ Andrew Bynum<\/strong><\/p>\n

Unlike most nights for Bogut when he has a clear advantage, tonight he’ll actually be up against two centers that are better than him.\u00a0 Bogut is averaging 14.1 points per game and 11.5 rebounds per game and last game against the Lakers he had 12 points and 18 boards.\u00a0 Pau Gasol has been his usual dominant self and outscored Bogut last game they faced each other, going for 18 points.\u00a0 Gasol is averaging 19.8 points per game and 11.1 rebounds per game this year, and leads all centers in assists with 4.2 a game.\u00a0 Bynum has been eased back into the lineup but has played well.\u00a0 It remains to be seen if he is a starter in tonight’s game, which would shift Gasol over to Power forward, or whether he comes off the bench again.\u00a0 Either way, he is going to be a challenge for Bogut as his size and length will give Bogut problems (though they are both listed at 7’0″).<\/p>\n

John Salmons vs. Kobe Bryant<\/strong><\/p>\n

While Salmons is a decent defender, it takes more than “being decent” to slow down Kobe Bryant.\u00a0 As mentioned, Kobe had a typical Kobe game last time against the Bucks and went for 31.\u00a0 For his career against the Bucks, he is avearging 24.2 points per game, slightly below his career average of 25.3, but the Bucks’ team has changed throughout the years so there is no reasonable means for comparison between Salmons and past Bucks shooting guards.\u00a0 Last game these teams played, Salmons went for 10 points and 6 assists.\u00a0 This year he is having a down year.\u00a0 His scoring average is down 6.8 points from last season to 13.1 this year.\u00a0 This is mostly attributed to a) he is shooting 3 less shots a game and b) he is hitting only 38.1% from the field.\u00a0 For the Bucks to have any chance tonight, Salmons is going to have to play better defense against Kobe Bryant and he is going to have to score more.\u00a0 With Jennings out, someone has to shoulder the load.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Milwaukee Bucks at L.A. Lakers December 21st, 2010 at 10:35 PM EST Opening Line:\u00a0 L.A. -12 Current Line:\u00a0 L.A. -12 Opening Total: 189 Current Total: 189 Opening Moneyline:\u00a0 L.A. -1500 \/ Milwaukee +950 Current Moneyline:\u00a0 L.A. -1200 \/ Milwaukee +800 NBA oddsmakers have set the spread wide tonight, apparently taking into account Milawukee’s poor play […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40250,"featured_media":9342,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1444,133],"tags":[187,663],"class_list":["post-11755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines","category-nba-handicapping","tag-la-lakers","tag-milwaukee-bucks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40250"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11755"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11755\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11757,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11755\/revisions\/11757"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}