NBA Friday, 11-10-17...

NBA Preview: The Clippers and Thunder are two teams looking to find their way early in the season.

Los Angeles Clippers (5-5) at Oklahoma City Thunder (4-7), Friday, 9:00 p.m. EST

Line: Thunder -6.5. Total: 209.5.

When Carmelo Anthony was traded from New York to Oklahoma City, Paul George proclaimed that the Thunder now have a championship team. The prognosticators were saying the Thunder could be a top 4 team in the Western Conference. Oklahoma City was projected to win 48 games this season.

The Thunder have some work to do if they are to live up to those lofty expectations.

OKC routed the Knicks in their opener on October 19 and it looked like the Thunder were well on their way to being a contender in the West. However, the Thunder have gone 3-7 since then and have lost their last four games.

The Thunder are struggling mightily against Western Conference teams, which is a problem since they reside in the West. Oklahoma City is 0-6 against the West and 4-1 against the East. While every talking head on television talks about how much better the West is over the East, the numbers do not bear that out at the moment.

The Western Conference teams only have 3 more wins than the Eastern Conference teams. However, as the season progresses, that margin is likely to grow wider.

When LeBron James and Chris Bosh joined Dwayne Wade to form the Big 3 in Miami for the 2010-11 season, they struggled to stay above .500 early in the season. The Heat started 9-8 that season before they hit their stride, winning 12 straight games and 21 of their next 22 games.

So this Big 3 in OKC and their fan base needs to have some patience while this team figures it out. Russell Westbrook is going to have to take fewer shots so Melo and George can be more involved in the offense. Time will tell whether they can work it out.

The Clippers traded Chris Paul to Houston over the summer. Prognosticators projected the Clips to win about 43 or 44 games this season. Los Angeles started fast out of the gate as they won their first four games. However, they have gone 1-5 since and sit at 5-5 on the season.

Blake Griffin is being asked to carry a bigger load this season. Although without Paul in the Clippers backcourt, that burden may be too much for Griffin to carry.

The Clippers traded for Danio Gallinari a week after the Paul trade to Houston in what looks to be a nice addition on the surface. However, the oft injured Gallinari will be missing his second game of the season already on Friday with a strained left glute. Gallinari has missed at least 19 games in each of his last three seasons and missed the entire 2013-14 season.

Coach Doc Rivers has a lot of new players on his Clippers roster this season. So it looks like both these teams have a lot to figure out as the season progresses.

Injury report

Clippers: Austin Rivers is questionable with a mild ankle sprain. Gallinari is out with the strained left glute. Patrick Beverley is out with a sore right knee. Jamil Wilson is out with lower back spasms. Milos Teodosic is out with a plantar fascia issue in his left foot. Thunder: There are no injuries to report.


Record:

19-9 (regular season), +$910.

Sides: 10-5
Totals: 8-1
2H: 0-3
1Q: 1-0
#1 Sides: 16-8
#1 Totals: 18-6

Note: I will have picks, fantasy information and perhaps a play posted Friday afternoon between 3 and 4 p.m. EST.

Bowling^&%

Edit, 5:21 p.m. EST:

Orlando Magic -3.5, laying $110 to win $100 – The line is 3.5 at four of the five sportsbooks I glanced at. There are a couple of very public plays on the board tonight. This is the play I agree with the public on. The Suns won four of their first five games with their new coach, covering the Vegas spread in all five of those all games. They have now lost and not covered the spread in their last four games. This is still a chart-play to fade Phoenix. Orlando has Elfrid Payton back and they won and covered their last game against the Knicks as he had 11 points and 11 assists in the victory. The Magic are 3-2 on the road straight up, while Phoenix is 2-4 at home straight up.

Picks

Sides: (1) Orl, (2) OKC, (3) Por, (4) Chi, (5) Cha, (6) Milw, (7) Atl, (8) Utah

Totals: (1) OKC un, (2) Chi ov, (3) Por ov, (4) Atl ov, (5) Cha un, (6) Utah un, (7) Orl un, (8) Milw ov

Other thoughts: I may be betting Oklahoma City, too, as they had a closed door meeting after their nationally televised loss to Denver last night. The Thunder have lost four straight and are in major bounce-back mode, while the Clippers are banged up and struggling. I will post it here if it does become a play.

Thank you for your work.

Can you explain chart-play to me?

HarryCaray said:

Thank you for your work.

Can you explain chart-play to me?

Click to expand...

When a Cover, Not Cover, Over or Under streak of at least 4 ends, the streak generally immediately reverses itself...

So for totals, when you have 5, 6, 7 overs in a row and then the 8th game goes Under, you immediately take the next game Under because a lot of times, those streaks immediately reverse themselves....As the streaks go one way or the other, the Vegas numbers trend up or down or for or against whatever is trending.... And sometimes the Vegas number is late in catching up when the streak reverses and the numbers trend back the other way....

I also have Quasi-chart plays which is what Charlotte is tonight, although I did not bet them....I don't bet every chart-play....There are many of them every week... The Celtics covered (C) 8 games in a row and then had a Not-Cover (NC) against Atlanta....Normally, that is a strong chart-play to fade the Celtics when they played the Lakers 2 nights ago, but I just didn't like the matchup and the big line move and some injury situations, so I passed....The Celtics did Cover that game vs LAL...So tonight, it would be a "Quasi-chart play" to fade Boston, because there are plenty of instances where a streak ends like that Cover streak, and the team does Cover one more game before going on a 3 or 4-game NC streak....Boston has covered 9 of 10 and at some point, there will be a NC streak for Boston, even if it's not a clean 4 or 5 NC streak, it may be a 4-out-of-5 game NC streak, or a 5-out-of-7 game NC streak... And I call those plays Quasi Chart-plays"....

I have kept paper charts for over 20 years where I can see an 8-week snap-shot of the season for all 30 teams on one piece of paper...When you look at that piece of paper, you see CLEAR patterns all over the place....Thus, the birth of the "chart-play"... If I can find some old paper charts, I will scan them and post them here....I think someone asked me to post a sample about 10 years ago, so I will look for that scan....

And remember, I don't play these blindly....I look at other factors....

I always point to this situation as the chart-play feast of all time:

New York Knicks, March 17, 1994:

began a C10 (covered 10 straight games) streak
then immediately had a NC9 streak
then immediately had a C8 streak

So a C10, NC9 and C8 all right in a row...

That C8 streak ended on May 11, 1994 in the playoffs...

And when that streak ended, there was a small Quasi-chart play afterwards, as we had NC (which ended that C8 streak), C (which creates a possible Quasi-chart play), NC, NC, NC ...

Here is a link to a pdf of my charts from the 2006-07 season at the halfway point of the season (someone asked me back then, maybe even on this forum, to post my paper chart):

http://www.tricountyleague.com/2006_NBA_Charts-2.pdf

I took OKC as well, Adams being out may actually help them get the ball moving more.

Celtics without Irving and Horford, Smart chucking up bricks, and bunch of players I've never hear of come back from 18pts down to be leading by 3 with 2 mins to go. They gotta pay Brad Stevens more.

croaker said:

Celtics without Irving and Horford, Smart chucking up bricks, and bunch of players I've never hear of come back from 18pts down to be leading by 3 with 2 mins to go. They gotta pay Brad Stevens more.

Click to expand...

I saw a lot of the first half....And you are right - Brad Stevens is obviously a very good coach....

Thanks for the explanation brewers. Agree 100% about the streaks and turnarounds. I've always said the key to NBA was knowing when to hop on board with a team or hop on the fade train with a team.

Been following your work, excellent stuff.

Thank you for sharing.

Have you tracked double-chart plays? For example

Celtics go C, C, C, C, C, C, NC
Cavs go NC, NC, NC, NC, NC, C

Celtics play Cavs