The Raptors end their Western Conference road trip, narrowly escaping a continent-wide polar vortex snowstorm. <\/p>\n
Win or lose in Oklahoma City, Toronto has guaranteed a winning record on this \u2018West Coast Swing\u2019. <\/p>\n
It was a great test for this young squad that has played over a month without a traditional centre.<\/p>\n
These stretches are typically a litmus test of how their season has played out.<\/p>\n
Over the past three years, Toronto has gone 11-22 on road trips of five games or more. <\/p>\n
Even though a pencilled loss against the defending champs is expected, there should be more optimism about their future prospects as they return home. <\/p>\n
They are firmly in the Top 6 of the East, sitting 3.5 games out of the play-in. <\/p>\n
Perhaps Toronto can snag one more win as an underdog, but in anticipation of a tough wrap on the road, here are three bets worth exploring. <\/p>\n
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander over 32.5 points (-122)<\/p>\n
SGA is simply matchup-proof. <\/p>\n
He plays such a critical role in their offence that there\u2019s really no way around his impact. <\/p>\n
Shai is in the middle of a historic streak, scoring 20 or more points in 116 consecutive games. <\/p>\n
He sits 10 behind Wilt Chamberlain for the all-time record. <\/p>\n
In this specific matchup, SGA\u2019s line feels underpriced given the injury situation for OKC. <\/p>\n
Jalen Williams, Ajay Mitchell, Alex Caruso and Isaiah Hartenstein are all out for this one, leaving the Thunder devoid of playmakers. <\/p>\n
Since Williams went down three games ago, SGA has averaged 39 points on 67 percent shooting. <\/p>\n
Sometimes SGA is a risky bet given his tendency to sit fourth quarters. <\/p>\n
OKC is so undermanned, it seems unlikely he only plays the first three. <\/p>\n
As a bonus, Toronto owns the third-highest foul rate in the NBA. <\/p>\n
For all the \u201cfoul merchant\u201d haters who read this, SGA could take advantage of a defence that tends to be overly aggressive.<\/p>\n
Chet Holmgren over 9.5 rebounds (-114)<\/p>\n
Sticking to the subject of injuries, Holmgren\u2019s been forced to step up with Hartenstein absent since December 29th. <\/p>\n
Over this stretch, the DPOY front-runner is playing a season-high 30.2 minutes a night and averaging 9.9 rebounds which would be a career-high. <\/p>\n
Even though Holmgren does not profile as a dominant rebounding force, the 7-footer has such a size advantage against the Raptors who will have either Collin Murray-Boyles or Sandro Mamukelashvili filling in at centre. <\/p>\n
As we saw two nights ago against Portland, Donovan Clingan had one of his best rebounding games of the year, snatching 16 off the glass. <\/p>\n
Toronto has faced two other traditional bigs this month \u2013 Ivica Zubac and Deandre Ayton. <\/p>\n
They finished with 14 and 13 boards respectively.<\/p>\n
Scottie Barnes under 17.5 points (-122)<\/p>\n
Writing about another DPOY candidate, Barnes could find his hands full on defence at the expense of his offence. <\/p>\n
This Thunder squad owns the league\u2019s best defensive rating once again and is a class above all other 29 teams this season. <\/p>\n
They are very intentional about protecting the rim and actively collapse while foregoing shots from deep. <\/p>\n
Three-point shooting is the Achilles\u2019 heel of this defence as they allow the fourth-most makes per game. <\/p>\n
Unfortunately, that doesn\u2019t match up well with Scottie\u2019s strengths. <\/p>\n
He\u2019s down to 2.5 three-point attempts a game in January and has only hit three treys all month. <\/p>\n
He\u2019s shooting 11.1 percent over this period.<\/p>\n
His offence primarily comes in the paint or on the fastbreak; 73.1 percent of his buckets are classified under one of those two. <\/p>\n
OKC is the No. 1 defence in both of those categories, a major conflict with Scottie\u2019s offensive game. <\/p>\n
As a final note on taking Scottie\u2019s under, I feel the oddsmakers aren\u2019t factoring in RJ Barrett\u2019s impact on his scoring. <\/p>\n
Barnes has scored 20 or more points in six of his last eight games, but they\u2019ve all come with Barrett absent. <\/p>\n
If you zoom out and look at Scottie\u2019s scoring over the six-game stretch that Barrett was healthy around New Years, his scoring dropped off by 4.3 a night compared to this recent stretch. <\/p>\n
I think his numbers are slightly inflated and due for a correction against the league\u2019s top defence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Raptors end their Western Conference road trip, narrowly escaping a continent-wide polar vortex snowstorm. Win or lose…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":560733,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3783],"tags":[23475,7,6,60744,310,475,179,3966,3965,312],"class_list":{"0":"post-560732","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-oklahoma-city-thunder","8":"tag-apple-news","9":"tag-basketball","10":"tag-nba","11":"tag-nba-sports-basketball-league-nba","12":"tag-oklahoma","13":"tag-oklahoma-city","14":"tag-oklahoma-city-thunder","15":"tag-oklahomacity","16":"tag-oklahomacitythunder","17":"tag-thunder"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115958254622060375","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=560732"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560732\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/560733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=560732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=560732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=560732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}