{"id":11924,"date":"2010-12-28T11:00:31","date_gmt":"2010-12-28T16:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/?p=11924"},"modified":"2010-12-28T11:00:31","modified_gmt":"2010-12-28T16:00:31","slug":"nba-picks-ats-orlando-magic-at-cleveland-cavs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/nba-picks-ats-orlando-magic-at-cleveland-cavs-11924\/","title":{"rendered":"NBA Picks ATS: Orlando Magic at Cleveland Cavs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Orlando Magic at Cleveland Cavs
\nDecember 28th, 2010 at 7:00 PM EST
\nOpening Line:\u00a0 Orlando -7.5
\nCurrent Line: Orlando -7.5
\nOpening Total:\u00a0 191
\nCurrent Total: 192.5
\nOpening Moneyline:\u00a0 Orlando -400 \/ Cleveland +330
\nCurrent Moneyline:\u00a0 Orlando -360 \/ Cleveland +280<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"
Dwight Howard doesn't have much trouble with Anderson Varejao, but will have to avoid foul trouble<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Both teams come in riding streaks.\u00a0 Orlando has won three straight against San Antonio, Boston, and New Jersey.\u00a0 They became the first team in 13 years to end two ten plus winning streaks by opposing teams in back to back games.\u00a0 Cleveland, meanwhile, has dropped their past three, to\u00a0 Minnesota, Atlanta, and Utah.\u00a0 They have a horrible -8.9 point differential, as they only manage 93.7 points per game while giving up 102.6.\u00a0 Orlando is +4.1, scoring 96.9 and giving up 92.8.<\/p>\n

There should be a lot of made threes, at least for Orlando.\u00a0 They are third best in the league with 8.6 threes made per game, and Cleveland gives up the most threes per game with opponents averaging 8.6 threes per night against Cleveland.\u00a0 Orlando dealt out three great three point shooters in their trades (Pietrus, Carter, and Rashard Lewis), but they brought back three marksman as well in Arenas, Jason Richardson, and Hedo Turkoglu, so nothing should change as far as their inside-outside three point attack.<\/p>\n

Orlando’s defense has been particularly great of late, and Cleveland hasn’t scored more than 100 points in a game in over a month.\u00a0 It would seem to indicate there is a great chance at the total going UNDER, and indeed the total has gone UNDER in 9 of Cleveland’s past 12 home games.\u00a0 They have dropped 13 of their last 14 games and are 4-17-1 ATS in their last 22 games against the Magic.\u00a0 However, worthy to note is that the total has gone OVER In 4 of Cleveland’s past 5 home games against the Magic, but perhaps this is overstated since it dates back to what can only be called “The LeBron Era.”\u00a0 Orlando has lost 5 of their last 7 road games and has dropped 4 of their past 6 in Cleveland.<\/p>\n

Some key matchups to watch:<\/p>\n

Jameer Nelson vs. Mo Williams<\/strong><\/p>\n

Jameer Nelson’s scoring has taken a small hit since the trade that brought in Gilbert Arenas.\u00a0 Since then he is averaging 12.4 points per game, slightly less than his 14.1 for the season.\u00a0 Last game against Cleveland, he scored 20 points and dished out 6 assists in a 111-100 Magic win.\u00a0 Equally, however, Mo Williams had a big night, too, scoring 20 points and dishing out 8 assists.\u00a0 His stats on the year are slightly better than Nelson’s, too, scoring 15.3 and dishing out 7.2 assists, but that is a moot comparison, as Nelson could probably do even more damage if he were on the horrid-lacking-offensive-firepower Cavs team.<\/p>\n

Dwight Howard vs. Anderson Varejao<\/strong>
\nDwight Howard had a typical Dwight Howard night last game against Varejao, scoring 23 points and grabbing 11 boards.\u00a0 Varejao looks to flop a lot against Howard and Dwight will need to be careful not to get into early foul trouble since the Magic essentially have no backup center now.\u00a0 Varejao isn’t much of a threat offensively, but if Howard cheats off him too much he could get some garbage buckets.<\/p>\n

Given the Magic’s recent play, NBA Oddsmakers seem to have set the point spread a little low on this one.\u00a0 Look for the Magic to come out firing.\u00a0 Cleveland is a bad team, and they aren’t even good at Quicken Loans arena, so the Magic should have no problem covering the spread.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Orlando Magic at Cleveland Cavs December 28th, 2010 at 7:00 PM EST Opening Line:\u00a0 Orlando -7.5 Current Line: Orlando -7.5 Opening Total:\u00a0 191 Current Total: 192.5 Opening Moneyline:\u00a0 Orlando -400 \/ Cleveland +330 Current Moneyline:\u00a0 Orlando -360 \/ Cleveland +280 Both teams come in riding streaks.\u00a0 Orlando has won three straight against San Antonio, Boston, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40250,"featured_media":5467,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1444,133],"tags":[1516,659],"class_list":["post-11924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines","category-nba-handicapping","tag-cleveland-cavs","tag-orlando-magic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11924","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=11924"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11924\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11925,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11924\/revisions\/11925"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}