{"id":31757,"date":"2013-12-12T13:43:21","date_gmt":"2013-12-12T18:43:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/?p=31757"},"modified":"2013-12-12T13:43:21","modified_gmt":"2013-12-12T18:43:21","slug":"nba-picks-houston-rockets-vs-portland-trail-blazers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/nba-picks-houston-rockets-vs-portland-trail-blazers-31757\/","title":{"rendered":"NBA Picks: Houston Rockets vs. Portland Trail Blazers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Houston Rockets vs. Portland Trail Blazers
\nThursday, 12\/12\/13, 10:30 PM EST
\nOpening Point Spread:\u00a0 Portland -4
\nCurrent Betting Line:\u00a0 Portland -3
\nOpening Total:\u00a0 212
\nCurrent Total:\u00a0 214.5
\nOdds Courtesy of Bookmaker<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The Portland Trail Blazers have won five of their last six games<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Houston has won back-to-back games, including a 98-88 victory over the Orlando Magic as 13.5-point home favorites Sunday, while going UNDER the betting total for a third consecutive contest.\u00a0 The Rockets have four probable starters averaging in double figures, with shooting guard James Harden leading the way in scoring 24.6 points a contest, which is important to consider when making your NBA betting picks.\u00a0 The team is 5-4 SU on the road this season, including a 4-3 mark versus Western Conference foes.\u00a0 Houston is 7-13 SUATS as road underdogs of 3.5 to 6 points the last two-plus seasons, with the OVER going 11-9 in that situation.<\/p>\n

The Rockets have registered consecutive 116-point outings at Portland, which can\u2019t be ignored when looking over the NBA betting lines.\u00a0 Houston has outscored opponents a combined 59-30 in the first quarter in the last two games, while it set a season high in rebounding last time out against the Magic.\u00a0 Offensively, the team leads the league in averaging 107.5 points per game, which is just above the 106.0 it finished with a season ago.<\/p>\n

Portland has won five of its last six games, including a 105-94 victory over the Utah Jazz as seven-point road favorites Monday, while going UNDER the betting total for the first time in seven contests.\u00a0 The Trail Blazers are getting tremendous production out of forward LaMarcus Aldridge once again, as he comes in averaging 23.2 points and 10.0 rebounds per game.\u00a0 Point guard Damian Lillard is also a major player on the offensive end\u2014leading the team in averaging 5.6 assists per game.\u00a0 Portland is 17-5 SU and 14-8 ATS in December the last two-plus seasons.<\/p>\n

The Trail Blazers\u2019 18-4 record is their best 22-game start since going 20-2 to begin the 1990-91 campaign.\u00a0 Portland has been able to space things out on the offensive end due to its resurgent shooting from the three-point area, with Wesley Matthews leading the way in hitting 57-of-118 shots from beyond the arc.<\/p>\n

Sports bettors will likely back the Rockets due to their 5-0-1 ATS mark in their last six trips to Portland.<\/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":"

Houston Rockets vs. Portland Trail Blazers Thursday, 12\/12\/13, 10:30 PM EST Opening Point Spread:\u00a0 Portland -4 Current Betting Line:\u00a0 Portland -3 Opening Total:\u00a0 212 Current Total:\u00a0 214.5 Odds Courtesy of Bookmaker Houston has won back-to-back games, including a 98-88 victory over the Orlando Magic as 13.5-point home favorites Sunday, while going UNDER the betting total […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":181,"featured_media":15710,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1444,133],"tags":[831,3595,3303,18,830,3693],"class_list":["post-31757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines","category-nba-handicapping","tag-houston-rockets","tag-james-harden","tag-lamarcus-aldridge","tag-nba","tag-portland-trail-blazers","tag-western-conference"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31757","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=31757"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31757\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31758,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31757\/revisions\/31758"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}