{"id":13669,"date":"2011-02-25T19:02:23","date_gmt":"2011-02-26T00:02:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/?p=13669"},"modified":"2011-02-25T19:02:23","modified_gmt":"2011-02-26T00:02:23","slug":"perkins-debut-okc-thunder-at-orlando-magic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/perkins-debut-okc-thunder-at-orlando-magic-13669\/","title":{"rendered":"Perkins’ Debut: OKC Thunder at Orlando Magic"},"content":{"rendered":"

Oklahoma City Thunder AT Orlando Magic
\nFeb 25, 2011 at 8 PM EST
\nOpening Line:\u00a0 Orlando -5.5
\nCurrent Line:\u00a0 Orlando -6
\nOpening Total:\u00a0 207
\nCurrent Total:\u00a0 205
\nOpening Moneyline: Orl -300 \/ OKC +250
\nCurrent Moneyline:\u00a0 Orl -260 \/ OKC +220<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"
Westbrook had his first career triple double last game against the magic<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Thunder have needed size for years, and they finally found a way to add it before the trade deadline, dealing their undersized power forward Jeff Green, Nenad Krstic, and a first round pick and bringing in the diminutive Nate Robinson and big man Kendrick Perkins to man the center position.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had a unique opportunity to add a proven presence in our front court in acquiring Kendrick,\u201d general manager Sam Presti said. \u201cHe will help anchor our defense while Nate will add depth and athleticism to our backcourt.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tonight will offer insight into whether the move really helped the Thunder or not.\u00a0 Perkins has always done an admirable job on Howard and Howard has traditionally abused the Thunder.\u00a0 If they can now keep Howard in check, they might have the ingredients necessary to end their six game losing streak they have in road games against the Magic.<\/p>\n

Some betting trends:<\/p>\n

The total has gone OVER in 8 of Oklahoma City’s last 12 games and Oklahoma City is 6-3 SU in their last 9 games.\u00a0 Oklahoma City is 4-2 SU in their last 6 games on the road and the total has gone OVER In 4 of OKC’s last 6 games on the road.\u00a0 The total has gone UNDER in 10 of their last 14 games against the Magic and Oklahoma City is 2-8 SU in their last 10 games against Orlando.\u00a0 Oklahoma City is 2-4 ATS in their last 6 games on the road against the Magic.\u00a0 The total has gone UNDER in 5 of OKC’s last 6 games on the road against the Magic and Oklahoma City is 0-5 SU in their last 5 on the road in Orlando.<\/p>\n

The total has gone UNDER in 5 of Orlando’s last 7 games and they are 4-2 SU in their last 6 games.\u00a0 Orlando is 12-4 SU in their last 16 at home and the total has gone UNDER in 9 of their last 13 home games.\u00a0 The total has gone UNDER in 10 of Orlando’s last 14 games against Oklahoma City and Orlando is 8-2 SU in their last 10 games against the Thunder.\u00a0 Orlando is 5-0 SU in their last 5 home games against OKC and the total has gone UNDER in 5 of their last 6 home games against the Thunder.<\/p>\n

Key Matchups:<\/p>\n

Kendrick Perkins vs. Dwight Howard<\/strong><\/p>\n

Admittedly, this is more about Dwight Howard’s offense than anything else, but Perkins has proven to be one of the few “Dwight stoppers” in the league.\u00a0 Boston typically played Perkins straight up against Howard, and now Oklahoma City can do the same, which effectively limits Orlando’s deadly three point shooting.\u00a0 Last time the Thunder and Magic met, Howard scored 39 points and grabbed 18 rebounds.\u00a0 Those figures are sure to go down tonight.\u00a0 For his career against OKC he has averaged 20.2 points per game and 13.6 rebounds per game.<\/p>\n

Russell Westbrook vs. Jameer Nelson<\/strong><\/p>\n

Last game against the Magic, Westbrook went nuts, scoring 32 points, dishing 13 assists, and grabbing 10 rebounds, for his first career triple double.\u00a0 Nelson really has no defense against Westbrook.\u00a0 Westbrook is 6 inches taller than the 5’9″ Nelson (let’s be real, no one thinks he is his listed 6’0″) and has the athleticism to abuse even bigger players.\u00a0 In addition to destroying Nelson on the offensive end, he also held Nelson to 9 points and 6 assists.\u00a0 If the Magic are going to win tonight, with Dwight being more nuetralized by Perkins, they are going to need a bigger game from Nelson.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Oklahoma City Thunder AT Orlando Magic Feb 25, 2011 at 8 PM EST Opening Line:\u00a0 Orlando -5.5 Current Line:\u00a0 Orlando -6 Opening Total:\u00a0 207 Current Total:\u00a0 205 Opening Moneyline: Orl -300 \/ OKC +250 Current Moneyline:\u00a0 Orl -260 \/ OKC +220 The Thunder have needed size for years, and they finally found a way to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40250,"featured_media":9295,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1444,133],"tags":[833,658,1636,399,659,3298],"class_list":["post-13669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines","category-nba-handicapping","tag-dwight-howard","tag-jameer-nelson","tag-kendrick-perkins","tag-oklahoma-city-thunder","tag-orlando-magic","tag-russell-westbrook"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13669","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=13669"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13669\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13671,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13669\/revisions\/13671"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}