{"id":9967,"date":"2010-10-27T08:00:11","date_gmt":"2010-10-27T13:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/?p=9967"},"modified":"2010-10-27T03:06:21","modified_gmt":"2010-10-27T08:06:21","slug":"nba-betting-preview-chicago-bulls-at-oklahoma-city-thunder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/nba-betting-preview-chicago-bulls-at-oklahoma-city-thunder-9967\/","title":{"rendered":"NBA Betting Preview: Chicago Bulls at Oklahoma City Thunder"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chicago Bulls at Oklahoma City Thunder
\nWednesday, 10\/27\/10, 8:00 PM EST, TV:\u00a0 ESPN
\nOpening Point Spread:\u00a0 Oklahoma City -6.5
\nCurrent Betting Line:\u00a0 Oklahoma City -6
\nOpening Total:\u00a0 194
\nCurrent Total:\u00a0 195<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Kevin<\/a>
The Oklahoma City Thunder open the season as a six-point home favorite in hosting the Chicago Bulls<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Chicago opens up the 2010-11 season on the road and will take on the Oklahoma City Thunder in a contest that features the No. 8 seeds from each conference in last year\u2019s playoffs.\u00a0 The Bulls are looking to improve upon the 41-41 mark that it posted during the 2009-10 campaign and has many new faces aboard.\u00a0 \u201cIt\u2019s exciting that the new players are good players,\u201d point guard Derek Rose commented.\u201d\u00a0 They\u2019re not selfish.\u00a0 They can help my game.\u00a0 They\u2019re older than I am, so they know the NBA game better than me.\u201d\u00a0 The biggest acquisition of the offseason came in the form of former Utah Jazz forward Carlos Boozer, who was injured on October 2 at his home, with the team expecting his cast to be removed around November 2.\u00a0 The team finished out last season on a 9-2 ATS run on the road.\u00a0 Currently Oklahoma City is favored by 6 points on the current NBA point spreads.<\/p>\n

The Bulls will go as far as Rose takes them this year and he\u2019s made headlines due to his comments of wanting to be known as the best player in the league.\u00a0 He won a gold medal with Team USA at the FIBA World Championships and now has his mindset on becoming a superstar that can lead a team deep in the playoffs.\u00a0 Outside of Boozer, Chicago added much needed depth with the additions of Keith Bogans, Ronnie Brewer, Kyle Korver and C.J. Watson.\u00a0 The franchise will also be led by first-year head coach Tom Thibodeau after he spent 20 years as a well-respected NBA assistant and recently given credit to designing Boston\u2019s highly-regarded defense of the past three years.<\/p>\n

Oklahoma City concluded their exhibition schedule with a 4-3 record and look to take another step forward from its 50-32 overall record last season.\u00a0 \u201cI think we have the confidence but we still know that last year is over with,\u201d said Durant.\u00a0 \u201cWe know that we had a good year, we made it to the playoffs.\u201d\u00a0 The Thunder franchise finished with an above .500 record in the preseason for the first time since 2003.\u00a0 Oklahoma City benefited from an incredibly healthy season for its players last year, with four starting all 82 games for the Thunder.\u00a0 It led to the squad increasing its win total from 23 and securing the club\u2019s first playoff appearance since 2004-05.\u00a0 The team finished the season 4-1 ATS at home.<\/p>\n

The Thunder are led by Durant and he\u2019s a trendy pick to be named the league\u2019s Most Valuable Player for this season, as he averaged 30.1 points to win the scoring title last year.\u00a0 He also won MVP honors in the world championships over the summer, leading the United States to a gold medal.\u00a0 Oklahoma City emergence in the league can also be directly attributed to the rise of guard Russell Westbrook, who averaged 16.1 points, 8.0 assists and 4.9 rebounds in 34.3 minutes per game.\u00a0 He played alongside Durant and Rose this summer on the gold-medal team.\u00a0 The Thunder defeated 29 of the 30 teams in the NBA last season.<\/p>\n

Bettors are likely to play the Bulls in this contest due to the underdog being 4-0 ATS in the last four meetings, but the Thunder was 5-2 ATS in their last seven games as a home favorite of 5 to 10.5 points.\u00a0 Maddux Sports is still looking at this game at the time of publish but could possibly release a play on it.\u00a0 We started out the season with a 3-0 mark last night and will continue to build profit along the way.\u00a0 View the NBA betting picks page to get signed up for todays winning plays.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chicago Bulls at Oklahoma City Thunder Wednesday, 10\/27\/10, 8:00 PM EST, TV:\u00a0 ESPN Opening Point Spread:\u00a0 Oklahoma City -6.5 Current Betting Line:\u00a0 Oklahoma City -6 Opening Total:\u00a0 194 Current Total:\u00a0 195 Chicago opens up the 2010-11 season on the road and will take on the Oklahoma City Thunder in a contest that features the No. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":181,"featured_media":5491,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1444,133],"tags":[2067,174,3634,1193,18,399,3298],"class_list":["post-9967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines","category-nba-handicapping","tag-carlos-boozer","tag-chicago-bulls","tag-derek-rose","tag-kevin-durant","tag-nba","tag-oklahoma-city-thunder","tag-russell-westbrook"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9967","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=9967"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9967\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9977,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9967\/revisions\/9977"}],"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=9967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}