CP3 and early game expectations
CP3 and early game expectations
Posted the CP3 play in my props thread for tracking purposes, but I want to put this in here since this thread has been dedicated to this game. Big TNT matchup. Double revenge. We all know what transpired a month and half ago in LA, with the war of words on and off the court, spilling over into the locker rooms. Clippers are without 4 of their guards tonight, no Bradley, no Beverly (out for season) and no Tyrone Wallace, who has started at SG the past two games since the break. More importantly, it means a lot of minutes for Rivers and Milos, who will struggle to cover the best combo of guards in the NBA. Now, Harden could easily go off tonight, but everyone on that Rockets team knows what this means for CP3, especially after the last embarrassment. D'Antoni should give him a shot with plenty of minutes to rack up a nice line against his old team and shooting on a very familiar court. Rivers is another candidate to have a high scoring game, given the amount of minutes he is sure to rack up with a short bench and a chip on his shoulder (DNP in January's game, but was very vocal from the bench) and a social media post showing Paul mocking him in the time since the last meeting. The only reason I don't want to play him over is because I think that Paul could focus his energy on trying to lock him down defensively if he wanted to.
Clippers had a tough game last night in Denver that went pretty late in which the backups played a lot of 4th qtr minutes. We could see LA pretty gassed to start the game, especially when the bench comes in, so I'm going to play the Rockets small in the 1Q as well, with a keen eye towards an in-running opportunity to grab them at a number better than the opener of -7, looking for them to win this one going away in the end. Even if LA's starters are able to keep it close to start, I think the Rockets strong bench can easily outpace the Clippers short handed bench and pull away after Doc makes his first substitutions. Gordon is back tonight and that is a big boost to the Rockets bench as well. To add to Houston's extra motivation and LA's exhaustion, the Rockets are the leagues best 1Q team by average margin at +4.8 pts per 1Q and it gets even better when they're on the road, sporting a lofty +5.5 pts per 1Q average margin.
As stated before, I think the total is too high and I also like the Clippers team total under for the first half.
TOTAL o19-130 C. PAUL (HOU) PTS 8x
HOU 1Q -3 (-115) 2x
