{"id":12136,"date":"2011-01-03T20:14:39","date_gmt":"2011-01-04T01:14:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/?p=12136"},"modified":"2011-01-03T20:14:39","modified_gmt":"2011-01-04T01:14:39","slug":"run-n-gun-showdown-houston-rockets-at-denver-nuggets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/run-n-gun-showdown-houston-rockets-at-denver-nuggets-12136\/","title":{"rendered":"Run ‘n’ Gun Showdown: Houston Rockets at Denver Nuggets"},"content":{"rendered":"

Houston Rockets AT Denver Nuggets
\nMonday, January 3rd, 2011 at 9:05 PM EST
\nOpening Line:\u00a0 Denver -6.5
\nCurrent Line: Denver -7
\nOpening Total: 218
\nCurrent Total: 218
\nOpening Moneyline:\u00a0 Denver -300 \/ Houston +250
\nCurrent Moneyline:\u00a0 Denver -330 \/ Houston +265<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"
Chauncey Billups is aging like a fine wine<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Denver is riding a three game winning streak, having won their last three in decisive fashion against Sacramento, Minnesota and Portland.\u00a0 Only one of those three was closer than 10 points, a 6 point victory to Minnesota.\u00a0 Houston lost last time out to Portland, in Portland, by 15.\u00a0 LaMarcus Aldridge and Nicolas Batum hurt Houston badly, combining for 46 points, while no Rocket player scored more than 15.\u00a0 They gave up 100 points and will have to play better defense, though tonight will not be much about defense, both teams give up and score a lot of points.<\/p>\n

Houston scores 105.3 and gives up 104.3 and Denver scores 106.5 and gives up 103.9, so it is easy to see why NBA oddsmakers set the total so high at 218.\u00a0 While there are a few good individual defenders on both teams, their team defenses are weak and there isn’t a lot of emphasis put on it.<\/p>\n

Some betting trends:<\/p>\n

Houston is 1-3-1 ATS in their last 5 games and have won 6 of their past 8 games.\u00a0 The total has gone UNDER in 4 of their past 6 road games and they have won only 4 of their past 12 on the road.\u00a0 They are 2-4 ATS in their last 6 games against Denver.\u00a0 The total has gone OVER in 4 of their last 6 road games in Denver.<\/p>\n

Denver is 8-14-1 ATS in their last 23 games and the total has gone UNDER in 4 of their past 6.\u00a0 They have won 13 of their last 15 at the Pepsi Center.<\/p>\n

Some key matchups:
\n
\nAaron Brooks & Kyle Lowry vs. Chauncey Billups & Ty Lawson<\/strong><\/p>\n

I’ve listed both the backup and starter for both teams for a reason – they are currently in relative time shares, splitting the minutes.\u00a0 Brooks and Lowry are similar players, but Lowry looks to create for others a bit more than the shoot first Brooks.\u00a0 Their similarity is that they are both small, which may create problems for Houston since Billups is one of the bigger and stronger point guards in the league.\u00a0 They won’t have that problem when Lawson takes over the reigns, as he is a waterbug just like them, but containing Billups could prove to be a problem for Houston.\u00a0 Though Billups is no longer that fast at this point in this career (he never really was that fast to begin with for that matter), he has the guile to be able to control Brooks & Lowry enough to keep them from demolishing the Denver perimeter defense.<\/p>\n

Kevin Martin vs. Aaron Affalo<\/strong><\/p>\n

Kevin Martin is having his best season in quite a while.\u00a0 He’s averaging 23.0 points per game, his highest since 08-09 when he averaged 24.6 over 51 games for Sacramento.\u00a0 He’s scored 20 or more in 8 of his last 9 games and scored 21 last game against Denver, also contributing 4 points and 4 assists.\u00a0 Afflalo is one of the few good defenders in this game and will have a decent shot at containing Martin.\u00a0 Afflalo isn’t a bad scorer either (12.4 points per game in 35 minutes a night), so he will make Martin have to at least pay a modicum of attention to him on the offensive end, especially on the three point line, where he shoots 42%.<\/p>\n

This is an interesting NBA pick.\u00a0 NBA oddsmakers have set the line closer than I would have thought it would be, given Denver’s dominance at home.\u00a0 It should be interesting to see what happens with the over\/under, as even though it is very high at 218 (opening line), it is not unreasonable since both teams are capable of putting up big numbers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Houston Rockets AT Denver Nuggets Monday, January 3rd, 2011 at 9:05 PM EST Opening Line:\u00a0 Denver -6.5 Current Line: Denver -7 Opening Total: 218 Current Total: 218 Opening Moneyline:\u00a0 Denver -300 \/ Houston +250 Current Moneyline:\u00a0 Denver -330 \/ Houston +265 Denver is riding a three game winning streak, having won their last three in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40250,"featured_media":6832,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1444,133],"tags":[526,831],"class_list":["post-12136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines","category-nba-handicapping","tag-denver-nuggets","tag-houston-rockets"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12136","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=12136"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12136\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12137,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12136\/revisions\/12137"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}