{"id":11842,"date":"2010-12-23T10:31:18","date_gmt":"2010-12-23T15:31:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/?p=11842"},"modified":"2010-12-23T10:31:18","modified_gmt":"2010-12-23T15:31:18","slug":"nba-picks-ats-milwaukee-bucks-at-sacramento-kings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/nba-picks-ats-milwaukee-bucks-at-sacramento-kings-11842\/","title":{"rendered":"NBA Picks ATS: Milwaukee Bucks at Sacramento Kings"},"content":{"rendered":"

Milwaukee Bucks at Sacramento Kings
\nDecember 23rd, 2010 at 10:00 PM EST
\nOpening Line:\u00a0 Milwaukee -1
\nCurrent Line:\u00a0 Milwaukee -2
\nOpening Total: 185.5
\nCurrent Total:\u00a0 186
\nOpening Moneyline:\u00a0 Milwaukee -140 \/ Sacramento +120
\nCurrent Moneyline:\u00a0 Milwaukee – 140 \/ Sacramento +120<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mil<\/p>\n

\"\"
Andrew Bogut will have to pick up the scoring slack with Jennings out<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

waukee, somewhat miracuously, won last game against the Lakers.\u00a0 The miracle wasn’t in the way they played the game; the miracle was Kobe Bryant getting ejected.\u00a0 The heavily favored Lakers lost the game badly, even with Bucks missing floor general Brandon Jennings.\u00a0 The win snapped a three game skid the Bucks had, with previous losses to the Blazers, Jazz, and Spurs.\u00a0 Sacramento has been absolutely horrid and has dropped their past six contests, with three of them coming against other poor teams (Houston twice, and Golden State).\u00a0 They’ll have as good a chance as any to rebound tonight against the Bucks who simply aren’t the same team without their high scoring run and gun guard Jennings.<\/p>\n

What will enable the Bucks to win this game, as they are favored by NBA oddsmakers, is their stellar defense.\u00a0 They give up only 93.1 a game, but the last four games they have given up 98 per game.\u00a0 Their offense may struggle, but last game it was the tiny 5’5″ Earl Boykins that saved the day with 22 points and Salmons came up big with 20, too, though he has been struggling this year.\u00a0 \u201cI think as a team, if we get that effort, we can be tough,\u201d Salmons said. \u201cWe still haven\u2019t been healthy all year. We just have to go in every night, compete, play hard and see what happens.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some betting trends:\u00a0 The total has gone UNDER in 4 of Milwaukee’s past 6 games.\u00a0 They are 6-11-1 ATS over their last 18 games and they are 3-6 ATS on their last 9 road games.\u00a0 They have lost 7 of their last 9 on the road though and the total has gone UNDER in 4 of the past 6 when playing Sacramento.<\/p>\n

The total has gone UNDER in 15 of Sacramento’s past 21 games.\u00a0 They have dropped their past 6 games, in which they are 1-5 ATS.\u00a0 The total has gone OVER in 4 of their last 6 home games and they have lost 7 of their last 8 at home.\u00a0 They have won only 5 of their last 23 at home, but are 13-5 over their last 18 games against the Bucks.\u00a0 They are 1-5 ATS in their last 5 home games against Milwaukee.<\/p>\n

Key Matchup for tonight’s game:<\/p>\n

John Salmons vs. Tyreke Evans<\/p>\n

Evans is the reigning rookie of the year, but as I wrote in my player prop bet article about Sacramento, I predicted him to have a bit of a sophomore slump and cool off, and he certainly has.\u00a0 With teams more prepared to key in on him, his scoring average has fallen 3.3 points a game to 16.8 and his assists have dropped 0.5 a game, as well.\u00a0 He’s still playing good basketball, but his field goal percentage is an atrocious 38.3%, mainly due to teams putting bigger players on Evans to prevent him from abusing the smaller point guards.\u00a0 He’s scored but 14.5 per game over his last two games and will have a tough matchup in Salmons.\u00a0 Salmons is taller than Evans and close to being as strong, so Evans’ main two advantages are negated.\u00a0 Look for Salmons to attempt to use his size against Evans to get advantages close to the goal.<\/p>\n

Tonight should be a close battle between two horrible teams, and NBA oddsmakers have set the spread close.\u00a0 Milwaukee is without Jennings, but their defense is still tough, and Sacramento has home court advantage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Milwaukee Bucks at Sacramento Kings December 23rd, 2010 at 10:00 PM EST Opening Line:\u00a0 Milwaukee -1 Current Line:\u00a0 Milwaukee -2 Opening Total: 185.5 Current Total:\u00a0 186 Opening Moneyline:\u00a0 Milwaukee -140 \/ Sacramento +120 Current Moneyline:\u00a0 Milwaukee – 140 \/ Sacramento +120 Mil waukee, somewhat miracuously, won last game against the Lakers.\u00a0 The miracle wasn’t in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40250,"featured_media":9309,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1444,133],"tags":[663,582],"class_list":["post-11842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines","category-nba-handicapping","tag-milwaukee-bucks","tag-sacramento-kings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11842","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=11842"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11842\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11843,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11842\/revisions\/11843"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9309"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}