{"id":15038,"date":"2011-04-21T00:53:20","date_gmt":"2011-04-21T05:53:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/?p=15038"},"modified":"2011-04-21T00:54:22","modified_gmt":"2011-04-21T05:54:22","slug":"game-3-nba-playoff-picks-heat-going-for-3-0-series-lead-over-76ers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/game-3-nba-playoff-picks-heat-going-for-3-0-series-lead-over-76ers-15038\/","title":{"rendered":"Game 3 NBA Playoff Picks: Heat going for 3-0 series lead over 76ers"},"content":{"rendered":"

2011 NBA Eastern Conference Playoffs <\/strong>
\nFirst Round – Game 3<\/strong>
\nMiami Heat at Philadelphia 76ers, Wells Fargo Center, Philadelphia, PA<\/strong>
\nThursday, April 21, 2011, 8:00 pm Eastern, TV:\u00a0 TNT<\/strong>
\nOpening Line: Heat -4.5<\/strong>
\nCurrent Line: Heat -4.5<\/strong>
\nOpening Total: 187<\/strong>
\nCurrent Total: 187<\/strong>
\nMoney Line: Heat -200 \/ 76ers +170<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"76ers
Philadelphia's Andre Iguodala has scored just nine points combined in the first two games.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The second-seeded Miami Heat (60-24) are coming off a 94-73 rout of the seventh-seeded Philadelphia 76ers (41-43) in Game 2 on Monday, but their Game 1 performance might have been even more impressive considering how they have made a bad habit of faltering late.\u00a0 The Heat (-4.5) won the opener of their Eastern Conference first-round series 97-89 after seeing the 76ers score 12 straight points to pull within one.\u00a0 Now Miami will face its biggest challenge yet in a hostile environment at Philadelphia and against a team trying to avoid an 0-3 hole.<\/p>\n

The 76ers have not been able to slow down the Big 3 of LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh in the first two games and have seen their top players struggle as well.\u00a0 That obviously is a recipe for disaster heading into Game 3 and must change if they are going to get back into this series.\u00a0 Bosh alone has 46 points so far while Philly\u2019s top two scorers Elton Brand and Andre Iguodala have combined for 29.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Game 3, I think their will is at stake here,\u201d Bosh said. \u201cThey\u2019re going to come out fighting, they\u2019re going to come out really swinging, especially with that home energy behind them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Iguodala is still dealing with a knee injury and has had the added difficult challenge of trying to guard James, who scored a game-high 29 points in Game 2.\u00a0 The only positive for the Sixers is that not one Heat player besides the Big 3 has scored in double figures in the series.<\/p>\n

Hard to call that a moral victory though when you are down 0-2 and have lost nine straight games in the series, with the last win coming in 2009.\u00a0 Philadelphia has managed to keep Miami under 100 points in four of the past five meetings with the total also going UNDER four times.\u00a0 The problem is, the 76ers have not reached the century mark in any of those games either and have scored 100 only once in the last 10 meetings.<\/p>\n

To make matters worse, the Heat were an NBA-best 28-13 on the road during the regular season, which is even better than Philly\u2019s 26-15 home mark.\u00a0 Miami is 24-16-1 against the spread away from home compared to a 23-18 mark vs. the line for the 76ers, who have covered only one of their last eight games overall with the UNDER cashing each time.<\/p>\n

Now that you have read this NBA betting preview featuring the 76ers & Heat, check out the NBA odds on this and all the games to compare the best lines at multiple sportsbooks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

2011 NBA Eastern Conference Playoffs First Round – Game 3 Miami Heat at Philadelphia 76ers, Wells Fargo Center, Philadelphia, PA Thursday, April 21, 2011, 8:00 pm Eastern, TV:\u00a0 TNT Opening Line: Heat -4.5 Current Line: Heat -4.5 Opening Total: 187 Current Total: 187 Money Line: Heat -200 \/ 76ers +170 The second-seeded Miami Heat (60-24) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":194,"featured_media":9322,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1444,133],"tags":[3622,4672,4673,4674,4438,1553,4871,707,4439,1985,4857,4858,832,4440,3913],"class_list":["post-15038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines","category-nba-handicapping","tag-eastern-conference","tag-first-round","tag-first-round-betting","tag-first-round-picks","tag-free-pro-basketball-pick","tag-game-3","tag-heat-76ers-playoff-preview","tag-miami-heat","tag-nba-basketball-odds","tag-nba-picks","tag-nba-playoff-betting","tag-nba-playoff-picks","tag-philadelphia-76ers","tag-pro-basketball-betting","tag-tnt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15038","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\/194"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15038"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15038\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15044,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15038\/revisions\/15044"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}