The Dallas Mavericks are the wrong NBA pick as 4-point road faves for Tuesday’s matchup with the Los Angeles Lakers.
Dallas Mavericks vs. Los Angeles Lakers
Tuesday, March 1, 2022- 10:00 PM EST at Crypto.com Arena
Are the Los Angeles Lakers as we know them already done? At press time, the Lakers are ninth in the Western Conference standings at 27-33 (26-34 ATS), just 2.5 games ahead of the pack, and in very real danger of missing the playoffs entirely. They also won’t have Anthony Davis (sprained foot) until at least mid-March, and probably longer.
Video Picks: Watch BMR's Free Expert Sports Betting Picks of the Day
Woof. Things could get worse before they get better. The Lakers will host the fifth-place Dallas Mavericks (36-25 SU, 34-27 ATS) this Tuesday, and despite our best efforts to fade Dallas since the Kristaps Porzingis trade, they’ve messed up our NBA picks at 4-2 SU and 5-1 ATS since the deadline. We might have to have to give them a slight lean for this contest, slight because they’ve already moved from –3.5 to –4 at BetOnline (visit our BetOnline Review).
Mean, Lean and Slovene
At least that was the battle plan up until a moment ago. Unless I misread the data, FiveThirtyEight projected Dallas to win Tuesday’s matchup by 4.5 points, but now I look at it again and it says 2.5 points. What happened? Maybe it was the injury reports that just came down the wire; Trey Burke has just been ruled out with a sore left shoulder, and fellow point guard Frank Ntilikina (sprained right ankle) won’t be available, either.
Their absence hasn’t stopped the Mavericks from winning, though. Dallas has put all their eggs in the Luka Doncic basket, and Doncic has yet to crack – far from it. On February 10, the day of the Porzingis trade, Doncic scored a career-high 51 points in a 112-105 win over the Los Angeles Clippers (+6.5 away). It seems the Mavs are better off without Doncic and Porzingis sharing the floor – even if they didn’t get much of anything in return for Porzingis.
Spencer for Hire
Speaking of which, Dallas still didn’t have Spencer Dinwiddie and Davis Bertans in uniform on deadline day. But after a very slow start, and with both Burke and Ntilikina out of the lineup since February 17, both players have caught fire for the Mavs.
Dinwiddie was instrumental in Sunday’s 107-101 comeback win over the Golden State Warriors (–3.5 at home), scoring 24 points off the bench on 10-of-14 shooting; Bertans chipped in a couple of threes, his specialty, and posted a plus-15 to finish second behind Dinwiddie’s plus-17.
Join Now: $1,000 BMR 12-Week All Sports Challenge
As keen as we are to fade the Lakers, though, the projections aren’t in our corner – and we’re still not convinced that Dinwiddie (minus-0.9 BPM at Basketball Reference) and Bertans (minus-3.7 BPM) were just the victims of bad juju playing for the Washington Wizards. With that in mind, let’s hit the under for a small wager – a very small one, given that BetOnline has already dropped their total from 220 to 216.5 on Tuesday’s NBA odds board. Dang those sharps.
NBA Pick: Under 216.5 (–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.
