{"id":15122,"date":"2011-04-25T14:44:53","date_gmt":"2011-04-25T19:44:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/?p=15122"},"modified":"2011-04-25T14:44:53","modified_gmt":"2011-04-25T19:44:53","slug":"game-4-oklahoma-city-thunder-at-denver-nuggets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/game-4-oklahoma-city-thunder-at-denver-nuggets-15122\/","title":{"rendered":"Game 4: Oklahoma City Thunder At Denver Nuggets"},"content":{"rendered":"

Oklahoma City Thunder AT Denver Nuggets<\/strong>
\nApril 25, 2011 at 10:30 PM, TV: TNT<\/strong>
\nOpening Line:\u00a0 DEN -3.5<\/strong>
\nCurrent Line: DEN -3<\/strong>
\nOpening Total:\u00a0 205<\/strong>
\nCurrent Total:\u00a0 205<\/strong><\/p>\n

OKC leads Series 3-0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Trail
Durant looks to close out the Nuggets for his first career playoff sweep.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Thunder will look to complete a 4 game sweep of Denver tonight.\u00a0 Many did not predict this series to be close and few are surprised that the Nuggets have struggled so badly to contain Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant.\u00a0 Moreover, Denver did not close the season strongly and limped into the playoffs as winners of only 9 of their last 19 games.<\/p>\n

It’s not shocking that the Nuggets have struggled.\u00a0 Coach George Karl said he would have “much preferred to have played Dallas,” as the Nuggets just don’t matchup that well against the Thunder.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a big part of me that\u2019s disappointed because of our failures,\u201d Karl said Sunday. \u201cBut I also know that sometimes some of the best teams lose in the first round because of matchups and circumstances. Oklahoma City does a good job against some of our strengths. We like the rim, and they have four defenders that like to protect the rim, and do it pretty well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nuggets backup guard J.R. Smith almost brought the Nuggets back in the closing moments of Saturday’s loss.\u00a0 He missed a three at the buzzer that would have sent the game into overtime.\u00a0 Smith doesn’t take the possible sweep lightly.\u00a0 \u201cWhen you\u2019re on the verge of getting swept it\u2019s always embarrassing,\u201d Smith said. \u201cYou never want to get swept let alone lose six out of eight to this team in the season. It\u2019s not a good feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Thunder must look forward past this series when they close it out tonight with trepidation.\u00a0 Only five Thunder players have played in the playoffs past the first round, and only one is a starter (Perkins).\u00a0 Sefolosha, Nate Robinson, Nazr Mohammed and Nick Collison are the other four.<\/p>\n

Perkins knows, however, looking forward can be saved for after the game.\u00a0 The closeout game requires concentration from the players who may expect the team down 3-0 to come out lethargic and already defeated.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe closeout game is all mental,\u201d said Perkins, who won an NBA title with Boston in 2008. \u201cIt\u2019s going to have to be a mental game for us, mental toughness. It\u2019s not going to be easy, we\u2019re going to have to stick together and play possession by possession and make sure we make the extra effort.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some betting trends:<\/p>\n

The total has gone OVER in 4 of OKC’s last 6 games and the Thunder are 8-1 SU in their last 9 games.\u00a0 The Total has gone UNDER in 7 of the last 10 Oklahoma City Thunder road games and the Thunder are 9-2 SU in their last 11 road games.\u00a0 OKC is 5-0 SU in their last 5 games against the Nuggets and the total has gone UNDER In 5 of the last 6 against Denver.\u00a0 The total has also gone UNDER in 4 of OKC’s last 5 games against Denver on the road.\u00a0 The Thunder are 2-7 SU in their last 9 games on the road against the Denver Nuggets.<\/p>\n

Denver is 1-4 SU in their last 5 games and the Nuggets are 18-6-1 ATS in their last 25 games.\u00a0 The total has gone UNDER in 17 of Denver’s last 25 games and the Nuggets are 12-2 SU in their last 14 games at home.\u00a0 Denver is 9-3-1 ATS in their last 13 games at home and the total has gone UNDER in 4 of Denver’s last 6 games at home.\u00a0 The total has also gone UNDER in 5 of Denver’s last 6 games against the Oklahoma City Thunder.\u00a0 Denver is 0-5 SU in their last 5 games against OKC and the Nuggets are 1-4 ATS in their last 5 against the Thunder.\u00a0 The total has gone UNDER in 4 of the last 5 games against OKC and Denver is 7-2 SU in their last 9 games at home against the Thunder.\u00a0 The Nuggets are 2-5 ATS in their last 7 games at home against OKC.<\/p>\n

No team has ever come back from a 3-0 deficit, however, and it’s difficult to stretch the imagination enough to imagine Denver winning any more than one game, if they manage to steal a victory tonight.\u00a0 As they were last game, they are favored again, but it seems to be only semantics.\u00a0 If they can’t slow down Durant and Westbrook, as they haven’t been able to all series, the Thunder will wrap it up and move on to the second round.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Oklahoma City Thunder AT Denver Nuggets April 25, 2011 at 10:30 PM, TV: TNT Opening Line:\u00a0 DEN -3.5 Current Line: DEN -3 Opening Total:\u00a0 205 Current Total:\u00a0 205 OKC leads Series 3-0 The Thunder will look to complete a 4 game sweep of Denver tonight.\u00a0 Many did not predict this series to be close and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40250,"featured_media":5491,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1444,133],"tags":[526,1193,399,3298],"class_list":["post-15122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines","category-nba-handicapping","tag-denver-nuggets","tag-kevin-durant","tag-oklahoma-city-thunder","tag-russell-westbrook"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15122","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=15122"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15122\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15123,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15122\/revisions\/15123"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}