{"id":20847,"date":"2012-01-05T15:37:46","date_gmt":"2012-01-05T20:37:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/?p=20847"},"modified":"2012-01-05T15:37:46","modified_gmt":"2012-01-05T20:37:46","slug":"heat-vs-hawks-eastern-conference-rivals-face-off-inside-philips-arena","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/heat-vs-hawks-eastern-conference-rivals-face-off-inside-philips-arena-20847\/","title":{"rendered":"Heat vs. Hawks: Eastern Conference Rivals Face Off inside Philips Arena"},"content":{"rendered":"

Miami Heat at Atlanta Hawks
\nThursday, 1\/5\/12, 8:00 PM EST, TV:\u00a0 TNT
\nOpening Point Spread:\u00a0 Miami -3
\nCurrent Betting Line:\u00a0 Miami -2
\nOpening Total:\u00a0 189
\nCurrent Total:\u00a0 188.5
\nOdds Courtesy of Bookmaker<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Heat<\/a>
The Miami Heat have suffered some early nagging injuries to start the 2011-12 season<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Miami will have revenge on its mind after being handed its first loss of the season by Atlanta just two games back, dropping a 100-92 contest as 9.5-point home favorites.\u00a0 The Heat are a bit banged up with guard Dwyane Wade suffering a foot injury, while star forward LeBron James twisted his ankle in last night\u2019s 118-83 victory over the Indiana Pacers.\u00a0 Head coach Erik Spoelstra knows his squad will be challenged in trying to break Atlanta\u2019s zone defense if either player is missing from the lineup.\u00a0 Miami is 5-5 ATS as road favorite of three points or less the last two-plus seasons.<\/p>\n

The Heat won three of four meetings in this particular series a year ago, but are just 16-27 in games played in Atlanta overall.\u00a0 Miami was led offensively by James in the first game against these teams, scoring 28 points and grabbing seven rebounds with six assists.\u00a0 Wade contributed just 12 points, but did manage to dish out 10 assists.\u00a0 Entering tonight\u2019s contest, the Heat have won eight consecutive road games dating back to last season.<\/p>\n

Atlanta returns home after a three-game road trip and has alternated wins and losses over its last four games.\u00a0 The Hawks have been playing great defense throughout the early portion of the 2011-12 campaign, going \u2018under\u2019 the total in five of six contests.\u00a0 Guard Joe Johnson is the main player offensively, averaging 16.0 points, but that particular number is 2.2 points less than what he poured in a night last year.\u00a0 It\u2019s important to note that the team\u2019s average age of 29 years, 77 days, makes it the second-oldest team in the NBA.\u00a0 Atlanta is 6-2 ATS as a home underdog of three points or less.<\/p>\n

The Hawks are undefeated in two home games this season inside Philips Arena, but those victories came against the Washington Wizards and New Jersey Nets.\u00a0 Johnson scored 21 points in the first meeting between these teams, but has been limited to just 11.7 points per game in dropping three consecutive home games against tonight\u2019s opponent.\u00a0 Atlanta has managed to average just 83.7 points during that three-game losing streak.<\/p>\n

Bettors will likely back the Heat due to their 5-1 ATS mark as a favorite of 4.5 or less points, while the Hawks are 2-6 ATS in the last eight meetings.<\/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":"

Miami Heat at Atlanta Hawks Thursday, 1\/5\/12, 8:00 PM EST, TV:\u00a0 TNT Opening Point Spread:\u00a0 Miami -3 Current Betting Line:\u00a0 Miami -2 Opening Total:\u00a0 189 Current Total:\u00a0 188.5 Odds Courtesy of Bookmaker Miami will have revenge on its mind after being handed its first loss of the season by Atlanta just two games back, dropping […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":181,"featured_media":9327,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1444,133],"tags":[834,2896,2897,66,707,18,3967],"class_list":["post-20847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines","category-nba-handicapping","tag-atlanta-hawks","tag-dwyane-wade","tag-joe-johnson","tag-lebron-james","tag-miami-heat","tag-nba","tag-philips-arena"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20847","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=20847"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20847\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20848,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20847\/revisions\/20848"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}