{"id":14676,"date":"2011-04-05T15:03:46","date_gmt":"2011-04-05T20:03:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/?p=14676"},"modified":"2011-04-05T15:03:46","modified_gmt":"2011-04-05T20:03:46","slug":"buck-battle-milwaukee-visits-the-orlando-magic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/buck-battle-milwaukee-visits-the-orlando-magic-14676\/","title":{"rendered":"Buck Battle: Milwaukee Visits the Orlando Magic"},"content":{"rendered":"

Milwaukee Bucks AT Orlando Magic
\nApril 5, 2011 at 7 PM EST
\nOpening Line: Orl -8.5
\nCurrent Line: Orl -8
\nOpening total: 179
\nCurrent total: 180.5
\nOpening Moneyline:\u00a0 Orl -385 \/ Mil +325
\nCurrent Moneyline:\u00a0 Orl -410 \/ Mil +340<\/p>\n

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Jennings may be exciting, but he is horribly inefficient<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As badly as Milwaukee has struggled this year, this game tonight against Orlando is of crucial importance if they are to keep their playoff hopes alive.\u00a0 They currently sit three games behind 8th seed Indiana and the Bucks have split their last ten games, going 5-5.\u00a0 To make the playoffs, they are going to have to win all of their remaining 4 games after tonight and pray for Indiana losses.\u00a0 Indeed, the Bucks plight is very far fetched, but a loss tonight would mathematically eliminate Milwaukee from the post season.<\/p>\n

The last meeting between the teams went into overtime, with the Magic emerging as 4 point victories despite turning the ball over 19 times and failing to hit their free throws.\u00a0 Magic coach Stan Van Gundy said he was “[just] happy to get out of here with a win.”\u00a0 The Magic have not significantly improved their quality of play since March 16th, when they last faced the Bucks.\u00a0 In fact, Orlando has dropped two of their last three and just lost to Eastern Conference Cellar Dwellers Toronto.<\/p>\n

Speaking of the Toronto game, Van Gundy said:\u00a0 \u201cWe certainly didn\u2019t even try to turn it on tonight, Our guys want to try to pick their spots. I\u2019m not at all confident. I\u2019m confident in what we\u2019re able to do when we want to play, but I\u2019m not confident that our guys will come with an approach to really come out and play hard and play with great energy. I\u2019m not confident in that at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

If Orlando can’t come out with the necessary energy tonight, the desperate Bucks will pour on the pressure and try to get the Magic out of sorts and silence the home crowd.<\/p>\n

Some betting trends:<\/p>\n

The total has gone UNDER in 16 of Milwaukee’s last 23 games and the total has also gone UNDER for 8 of their last 12 on the road.\u00a0 Milwaukee is 3-10 SU in their last 13 road games and the total has gone UNDER in 4 of the last 5 meetings with the Orlando Magic.\u00a0 Milwaukee is 1-5 SU in their last 6 against Orlando and they are 0-5 SU in their last 5 road games with the Magic.\u00a0 Milwaukee is 2-6 ATS in their last 8 games in Orlando.<\/p>\n

The total has gone UNDER in 8 of Orlando’s last 11 games and Orlando is 6-3 SU in their last 9 games.\u00a0 Orlando is 0-5 ATS in their last 5 games and the total has gone UNDER in all 5 of the last 5 Magic home games.\u00a0 Orlando is 6-2 SU in their last 8 at home and they are 2-5 ATS in their last 7 against the Bucks.\u00a0 The total has gone UNDER in 4 of their last 5 against the Milwaukee Bucks and Orlando is 5-1 SU in their last 6 against Milwaukee.\u00a0 Orlando is 5-0 SU in their last 5 games at home against the Bucks.<\/p>\n

Key Matchups:<\/p>\n

Andrew Bogut vs. Dwight Howard<\/p>\n

Bogut is one of the few centers in the league that theoretically should be able to cover Howard.\u00a0 Despite the teams facing one another 3 times already, Howard and Bogut have only squared off once, in the second game.\u00a0 In the first meeting, Howard sat out and Gortat started.\u00a0 In the third meeting, Bogut sat out and Larry Sanders started.\u00a0 Tonight will give just another example of how much Dwight Howard is than other center in the league, though.\u00a0 Last game against Bogut, this year, Howard scored 28 points and ripped 13 boards.\u00a0 Bogut?\u00a0 6 points and 7 rebounds.\u00a0 Clearly, despite how good Bogut is against most of the league (13.0 ppg and 11.2 rpg), he is no match at all for “Superman.”\u00a0 Howard is simply too strong, too quick, and too smart to let a player like Bogut slow him down, and with Dwight’s improving outside jumpshot, Bogut is going to be backpedaling all night and probably will seek to foul Howard until he has used all 6 fouls.<\/p>\n

Brandon Jennings vs. Jameer Nelson & Gilbert Arenas<\/p>\n

The Jennings – Nelson matchup should be a fun one.\u00a0 Both are very diminutive guards that are shoot first ask questions later type of point guards.\u00a0 Jennings probably has one of the worst shot selections in the league, and takes a number of shots that he simply can’t make.\u00a0 To make matters worse, at least for his field goal percentage, is that he often ends up taking shots to beat the shot clock, which are invariably clunkers.\u00a0 Jennings is shooting 38.7% from the field this year, only slightly up from his even more disgusting 37.1% last season.\u00a0 He also doesn’t get that many assists, with only 4.9 a game, actually down from last season when he recorded 5.7 assists per game in two less minutes of playing time per night.\u00a0 Jameer, for as bad as a defender as he can be, should be able to control Jennings and mislead Jennings into thinking he has the upper hand against the Magic’s guard.\u00a0 While Nelson is in, expect Jennings to struggle, but when replaced by Arenas, if Boykins isn’t in (who would also burn Arenas), Jennings will get to the basket at will and create for himself and others.\u00a0 Overall, though most would say the Bucks have the better point guard, knowledgeable basketball fans know otherwise.<\/p>\n

Tonight’s matchup, as mentioned, is of much more importance to Milwaukee.\u00a0 Tonight is a must win.\u00a0 Both teams are rested since no NBA teams played last night, and even though the game will likely be low scoring, there will be a lot of energy on the court.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Milwaukee Bucks AT Orlando Magic April 5, 2011 at 7 PM EST Opening Line: Orl -8.5 Current Line: Orl -8 Opening total: 179 Current total: 180.5 Opening Moneyline:\u00a0 Orl -385 \/ Mil +325 Current Moneyline:\u00a0 Orl -410 \/ Mil +340 As badly as Milwaukee has struggled this year, this game tonight against Orlando is of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40250,"featured_media":9342,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1444,133],"tags":[662,833,663,659],"class_list":["post-14676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines","category-nba-handicapping","tag-andrew-bogut","tag-dwight-howard","tag-milwaukee-bucks","tag-orlando-magic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14676","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=14676"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14676\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14677,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14676\/revisions\/14677"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}