{"id":20638,"date":"2011-12-29T11:28:47","date_gmt":"2011-12-29T16:28:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/?p=20638"},"modified":"2011-12-29T11:28:47","modified_gmt":"2011-12-29T16:28:47","slug":"nba-predictions-new-york-knicks-vs-los-angeles-lakers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/nba-predictions-new-york-knicks-vs-los-angeles-lakers-20638\/","title":{"rendered":"NBA Predictions: New York Knicks vs. Los Angeles Lakers"},"content":{"rendered":"

New York Knicks at Los Angeles Lakers
\nThursday, 12\/29\/11, 10:30 PM EST, TV:\u00a0 TNT
\nOpening Point Spread:\u00a0 Los Angeles -4.5
\nCurrent Betting Line:\u00a0 Los Angeles -4
\nOpening Total:\u00a0 199
\nCurrent Total:\u00a0 195
\nOdds Courtesy of Bookmaker<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Lakers<\/a>
The Los Angeles Lakers have won eight straight against the New York Knicks heading into Thursday night's contest<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

New York heads to Los Angeles to complete its first back-to-back of the season and comes off a 92-78 loss to the Golden State Warriors as six-point road favorites.\u00a0 The Knicks were unable to build upon the momentum they created after tallying a 106-104 home win over the Boston Celtics on Christmas Day.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019m not making any excuses, but we\u2019re a young team that\u2019s coming together and we have to build,\u201d commented Knicks center Tyson Chandler.\u00a0 The franchise will look to earn its first win against Los Angeles since Feb. 13, 2007.\u00a0 New York is 14-9 ATS as a road underdog of 3.5 to 6 points the last two-plus years.<\/p>\n

The Knicks will lean heavily on the play of forward Amare Stoudemire in this particular contest, as he averaged 23.5 points and 9.5 rebounds over 34 minutes in two games against the Lakers last season.\u00a0 New York will conclude its West Coast trip in playing in Sacramento on New Year\u2019s Eve.\u00a0 It\u2019s important to note that the team\u2019s current eight-game losing streak against tonight\u2019s opponent is its longest current skid against any NBA team.<\/p>\n

Los Angeles snapped its two-game losing streak to open the season by tallying a 96-71 blowout win over the Utah Jazz as 5.5-point home favorites on Tuesday night.\u00a0 The Lakers limited the Jazz to 29-of-90 from the field, while all three of their games have gone \u2018under\u2019 the total thus far in the 2011-12 campaign.\u00a0 \u201cThe focus, the energy, the effort, that communication and trust that we brought defensively, was exciting to see,\u201d commented Lakers first-year head coach Mike Brown.\u00a0 Los Angeles is 9-7 ATS as a home favorite of 3.5 to 6 points the last two-plus years.<\/p>\n

The Lakers swept last year\u2019s series with the Knicks and are 59-26 all-time when playing host in this exciting matchup.\u00a0 Los Angeles will certainly want to get the ball into the hands of center Pau Gasol, who is averaging 20.4 points and 11.6 rebounds in his past five games versus the Knicks.\u00a0 Kobe Bryant has also gone off recently when playing tonight\u2019s opponent, scoring 34.1 points per game since the 2007-08 season, which is the most for the veteran against any team in that time frame.<\/p>\n

Bettors will likely back the Lakers due to their 4-1 ATS mark in the last five meetings, while the Knicks are 0-6 ATS versus the NBA\u2019s Pacific division.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t miss out on a winning season and let the NBA handicappers at Maddux Sports line your pockets with cash.\u00a0 Long term packages are available now!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New York Knicks at Los Angeles Lakers Thursday, 12\/29\/11, 10:30 PM EST, TV:\u00a0 TNT Opening Point Spread:\u00a0 Los Angeles -4.5 Current Betting Line:\u00a0 Los Angeles -4 Opening Total:\u00a0 199 Current Total:\u00a0 195 Odds Courtesy of Bookmaker New York heads to Los Angeles to complete its first back-to-back of the season and comes off a 92-78 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":181,"featured_media":3933,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1444,133],"tags":[669,67,68,18,115,909,699],"class_list":["post-20638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines","category-nba-handicapping","tag-amare-stoudemire","tag-kobe-bryant","tag-los-angeles-lakers","tag-nba","tag-new-york-knicks","tag-pau-gasol","tag-tyson-chandler"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20638","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\/181"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20638"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20638\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20639,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20638\/revisions\/20639"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}