{"id":12108,"date":"2011-01-01T14:06:30","date_gmt":"2011-01-01T19:06:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/?p=12108"},"modified":"2011-01-01T14:07:46","modified_gmt":"2011-01-01T19:07:46","slug":"blowout-special-cleveland-cavs-at-chicago-bulls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/blowout-special-cleveland-cavs-at-chicago-bulls-12108\/","title":{"rendered":"Blowout Special: Cleveland Cavs at Chicago Bulls"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cleveland Cavs AT Chicago Bulls
\nJanuary 1st, 2011 at 7:00 PM EST
\nOpening Line:\u00a0 Chicago -13.5
\nCurrent Line:\u00a0 Chicago -13.5
\nOpening Total: 189.5
\nCurrent Total: 189.5
\nOpening Moneyline:\u00a0 Chicago -1600 \/ Cleveland +1000
\nCurrent Moneyline:\u00a0 Chicago -1518 \/ Cleveland +1132<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"
Cleveland has no one capable of staying with Derrick Rose<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Tonight’s NBA pick for the Cavs and Bulls renders Chicago 13.5 point favorites.\u00a0 It’s easy to see why.\u00a0 Chicago has won their last 3 games and 8 of their last 10, while Cleveland has dropped 5 straight and lost 9 of their last 10.\u00a0 What’s worse for Cavs fans is that they haven’t even been close.\u00a0 They have a -9.1 point differential, scoring a mere 93.7 a game and giving up 102.8.\u00a0 Chicago as you would expect from a 21-10 team has a +5.2 differential, playing excellent defense, giving up 94.1 a game and scoring 99.4.<\/p>\n

Cleveland sports a horrible 3-14 road record and Chicago has only lost 3 home games all year out of 16 games.\u00a0 Cleveland couldn’t even hang with another bad team last game, losing to Charlotte (11-20) by 9.\u00a0 Chicago has been beating up on the horrible teams, but their last game against a +.500 team, New York, they lost by 8.\u00a0 But you can’t fault them for hitting an easy spot in their schedule, and they’ve looked great with Derrick Rose and Boozer connecting well, and winning in spite of Joakim Noah being out with a thumb injury.\u00a0 Cleveland has 3 starters with nagging “day to day” injuries in Daniel Gibson, Mo Williams, and Anderson Varejao.\u00a0 Missing two of these three players, or even one, will cripple Cleveland as they just don’t have the depth to sustain injuries.<\/p>\n

Some betting trends: <\/strong><\/p>\n

The total has gone UNDER in 4 of Cleveland’s last 5 games and they have lost all 5 of them, as previously alluded to.\u00a0 They are 1-9-2 ATS in their last 12 road games and the total has gone OVER in 7 of their last 10 on the road.\u00a0 Chicago has won 4 of the last 6 meetings and the total has gone OVER in 10 of the Cavs last 14 games in the United Center.<\/p>\n

Chicago has won 12 of their past 14 home games and 8 of their last 9.<\/p>\n

Key Matchups:<\/strong>
\n
\nDerrick Rose vs. Mo Williams & Ramon Sessions<\/strong><\/p>\n

Derrick Rose will punish either or both of Cleveland’s point guards tonight.\u00a0 Sessions has a better chance at staying with Rose as he is quicker than Mo Williams, but that really isn’t saying much.\u00a0 Rose is explosive and is having a phenomenal year, looking like a legitimate MVP candidate.\u00a0 He’s cooled of late after a ridiculously good November, but is still averaging 23.9 points on the year and 8.5 assists (good enough for 7th in the NBA).\u00a0 Mo Williams missed last game with his hip flexor injury and wasn’t playing particularly impressive ball before the injury, having scored less\u00a0 than 20 for four consecutive games.\u00a0 He needs to put up 20+ for Cleveland to have any chance at all of winning games.
\n
\nCarlos Boozer vs. Antawn Jamison & J.J. Hickson<\/strong><\/p>\n

Boozer is difficult for most power forwards to defend, never mind bad defenders like Jamison and Hickson.\u00a0 He’s having a typical “Boozer year” putting up 20.6 points per game and grabbing 9.7 boards a night.\u00a0 He’s needed more heavily on the boards with Noah out and he has responded.\u00a0 Grabbing 15, 9, 11, 19, 10, 11 rebounds in his last 6 games.\u00a0 He has also scored 20 or more in 8 of his last 9 games and 30 or more in 2 of them.\u00a0 Jamison has started to play better of late but still not well enough to keep the Cavs in games.\u00a0 Hickson was in the doghouse for a while but has recently started getting some minutes again.\u00a0 His size could give Boozer more problems than Jamison, but neither really has what it takes to stop an all star like Boozer.<\/p>\n

Tonight’s game probably won’t be very close as indicated by NBA oddsmakers setting the spread at 13.5 points.\u00a0 Chicago is very difficult for a good team to beat at home, nevermind a struggling and depleted Cavs squad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cleveland Cavs AT Chicago Bulls January 1st, 2011 at 7:00 PM EST Opening Line:\u00a0 Chicago -13.5 Current Line:\u00a0 Chicago -13.5 Opening Total: 189.5 Current Total: 189.5 Opening Moneyline:\u00a0 Chicago -1600 \/ Cleveland +1000 Current Moneyline:\u00a0 Chicago -1518 \/ Cleveland +1132 Tonight’s NBA pick for the Cavs and Bulls renders Chicago 13.5 point favorites.\u00a0 It’s easy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40250,"featured_media":9329,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1444,133],"tags":[174,1516],"class_list":["post-12108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines","category-nba-handicapping","tag-chicago-bulls","tag-cleveland-cavs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12108","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=12108"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12110,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12108\/revisions\/12110"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}