With the NBA lines as tight as they are, the Under is our NBA pick for Friday’s tilt between the Chicago Bulls and Golden State Warriors.
Friday, November 12, 2021- 10:00 PM EST at Chase Center
Maybe the Chicago Bulls (8-3 SU and ATS) aren’t Frankenstein’s monster of NBA teams after all. It sure looked at first like their decision to sign both Lonzo Ball and DeMar DeRozan was a classic case of poor roster construction; instead, Ball has blended well in the backcourt with Zach LaVine, and DeRozan has been bossing the mid-range. Adding Alex Caruso has also papered over some of the defensive issues the Bulls may have with LaVine and DeRozan.
Too bad for us the Bulls are about to visit the Golden State Warriors (10-1 SU, 7-3-1 ATS). I was wrong as wrong could be about this team and how well they’d do in the early season without Klay Thompson. What are we going to do with Friday’s NBA picks? The only sensible thing to do: Pound the Under on that 221.5-point opening total at BetOnline (visit our BetOnline Review).
The spread is definitely out of the question. The Dubs opened as 4.5-point home faves on the NBA odds board; FiveThirtyEight likes them to win by five, so that doesn’t leave us enough potential profit margin to work with. Nope, the ESPN Basketball Power Index doesn’t like this line, either; they have Golden State winning 70 percent of the time, or –233 using the slam-tastic BMR Odds Converter. That’s somewhere between –5 and –5.5 according to Wizard of Odds – still not enough room for to open up those wallets and/or purses.
That total, though. Here’s another thing that would-be smarties like myself got wrong: The increased propensity for 3-pointers during the preseason did not lead to a profitable run for the Over. Far from it. It’s the Under leading the way at a ridiculous 102-65 (61.1 percent). Blame the new Wilson balls, which players like Paul George say are far more difficult to grasp than the tried-and-true Spaldings.
The struggle is real. NPR did a story on this last week and found that shooting percentages were at their lowest in over 15 years, especially from 3-point territory. And this time, it’s not because the new balls are synthetic, like the last time the league tried to switch balls in 2006. The new Wilson ball is all-leather.
And it’s all over the place; I haven’t seen this many airballs since the last time I shot hoops at the gym, which was sometime during the Pleistocene Epoch. Not coincidentally, the Under is 7-4 for Golden State this year and 6-5 for Chicago.
The Dubs have also cranked up the intensity on defense, where they lead the league at 96.8 points allowed per 100 possessions – that’s 10.9 fewer points than last year. Chicago (101.7 points allowed) have played solid defense themselves, checking in at sixth overall inefficiency. We’ll buy that for a dollar.
NBA Pick: Under 221.5 (–110) with BetOnline (visit our BetOnline Review)
*The line and/or odds on picks in this article might have moved since the content was commissioned. For updated line movements, visit BMR’s free betting odds product.