{"id":15102,"date":"2011-04-24T01:36:02","date_gmt":"2011-04-24T06:36:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/?p=15102"},"modified":"2011-04-24T01:36:02","modified_gmt":"2011-04-24T06:36:02","slug":"game-4-nba-playoff-picks-heat-look-for-sweep-against-76ers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/game-4-nba-playoff-picks-heat-look-for-sweep-against-76ers-15102\/","title":{"rendered":"Game 4 NBA Playoff Picks: Heat look for sweep against 76ers"},"content":{"rendered":"

2011 NBA Eastern Conference Playoffs<\/strong>
\nFirst Round – Game 4<\/strong>
\nMiami Heat at Philadelphia 76ers, Wells Fargo Center, Philadelphia, PA<\/strong>
\nSunday, April 24, 2011, 1:00 pm Eastern, TV:\u00a0 ABC<\/strong>
\nOpening Line: Heat -6<\/strong>
\nCurrent Line: Heat -6<\/strong>
\nOpening Total: 186<\/strong>
\nCurrent Total: 188.5<\/strong>
\nMoney Line: Heat -260 \/ 76ers +220<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"76ers
LeBron James and the Heat can complete a sweep of the 76ers with another win on Sunday.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The second-seeded Miami Heat (61-24) will look to complete a four-game sweep of the seventh-seeded Philadelphia 76ers (41-44) on Sunday by using the same formula that has earned them wins in the first three games.\u00a0 The Heat (-6) have simply relied heavily on their Big 3 of LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh to take a commanding 3-0 lead in their first-round playoff series against the 76ers and have not needed contributions from anybody else along the way to get to this point.<\/p>\n

Zydrunas Ilgauskas is the only other Miami player besides James, Wade and Bosh to score 10 points in the series, and he managed to accomplish that in a 100-94 victory in Game 3 on Thursday.\u00a0 Wade led the way with a game-high 32 points while James added 24 points and grabbed a game-high 15 rebounds.\u00a0 The team has won seven games in a row straight-up, covering the spread in five of the last six.<\/p>\n

Philadelphia had gotten off to a great start for the second time in three games, leading 29-21 after the first quarter.\u00a0 But the Sixers collapsed in the fourth quarter yet again, getting outscored 27-19 after leading by two points at the end of the third.\u00a0 Elton Brand had a team-high 21 points and 11 rebounds while Jrue Holiday had 20 and dished out eight assists.<\/p>\n

The biggest issue for the Heat now is trying not to look past Game 4 and a potential matchup with the Boston Celtics in the Eastern Conference semifinals.\u00a0 The Celtics also lead their series with New York 3-0 and can advance by beating the Knicks later in the day.\u00a0 Miami\u2019s coaches and players are trying to say the right things but have no doubt been looking forward to facing Boston.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt wouldn\u2019t be right if Miami and Boston didn\u2019t meet in the playoffs,\u201d Wade said. \u201cEveryone is expecting that, but we both have to finish our business.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t look ahead,\u201d James said. \u201cNo one on this team looks ahead. This series isn\u2019t over yet. We got Philly to worry about. If we get to Boston, whenever that happens, then we\u2019ll get ready to take care of business, but I\u2019m not looking ahead to those guys because we still have to finish what we started.\u201d<\/p>\n

Philly has played worse than any team in the playoffs lately, so it is hard to imagine seeing a repeat of the scenario that unfolded in Indiana on Saturday when the Pacers avoided getting swept by Chicago with an 89-84 victory.\u00a0 The 76ers have dropped eight of their last nine games dating back to the regular season, going 1-8 against the spread over that span as well with the UNDER cashing eight times.<\/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 4 Miami Heat at Philadelphia 76ers, Wells Fargo Center, Philadelphia, PA Sunday, April 24, 2011, 1:00 pm Eastern, TV:\u00a0 ABC Opening Line: Heat -6 Current Line: Heat -6 Opening Total: 186 Current Total: 188.5 Money Line: Heat -260 \/ 76ers +220 The second-seeded Miami Heat (61-24) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":194,"featured_media":9324,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1444,133],"tags":[3115,3622,4672,4673,4674,4438,1576,4871,707,4439,1985,4857,4858,832,4440],"class_list":["post-15102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines","category-nba-handicapping","tag-abc","tag-eastern-conference","tag-first-round","tag-first-round-betting","tag-first-round-picks","tag-free-pro-basketball-pick","tag-game-4","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"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15102","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=15102"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15102\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15103,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15102\/revisions\/15103"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}