NBA Betting Preview: New Jersey Nets vs. Toronto Raptors

Added on Mar 05, 2011 by Jack Thurman in

NBA

NBA basketball will compete with English Premier League football for the attention of UK sports fans on Saturday as the New Jersey Nets play the Toronto Raptors in a second game at London’s O2 Arena. The Nets won Friday’s game despite point guard Deron Williams playing on a gimpy ankle.

New Jersey Nets vs Toronto Raptors (at London, England)
March 5, 2011 12:05 PM Pacific

We cashed a ticket on New Jersey in Friday’s game and we’re going to go the other way here. We’re still not overly thrilled with the state of this Toronto Raptors team–they’ve lost 14 of 18 straight up going 6-12 against the spread–but this is a unique dynamic with back to back games against the same team on the same court. The Nets are a -2′ point favorite here and on Friday we had some strong–and ultimately successful–emotional/subjective reasons for backing New Jersey. The same dynamic works against them here and we’d rather take the points in a matchup between teams that aren’t too far apart in terms of talent.

The Nets are no doubt headed in the right direction and Avery Johnson has done a solid job elevating them above last year’s ‘laughing stock’ status. The recent addition of Deron Williams was a great pickup (though you can make a compelling case that with a possible lottery pick thrown in the mix the Jazz got the better of the deal) but it has resulted in New Jersey being somewhat overvalued. Friday’s victory ended a six game SU losing streak and even with that win they’re just 4-11 SU in their last 15 games. Hard to justify a team with that record as a favorite of any sort on a neutral court. The Raptors are 7-3 SU against the Nets since 2008 and have split a pair of games this season. This matchup is in a couple of pointspread categories that have been brutal for the Nets this season–the best spot to use the Nets has been against better teams who still have a tendency to ‘take them lightly’. Against opponents of their own class they haven’t fared as well–New Jersey is 8-17 SU/7-18 ATS against opponents with losing records this year. They also haven’t fared well against their divisional rivals–admittedly that includes some heavyweights like Boston and New York–but nevertheless they’re 1-9 SU/2-8 ATS against the Atlantic Division.

As of yet no indication that Deron Williams will be kept out of this game or have his minutes limited but prior to the trip to London the team was at least addressing the possibility of shutting him down for the year. At any rate, he’s far from 100% and in the quick rematch situation we’ll take the points with the Raptors.

Bet Toronto Raptors +2′ over New Jersey Nets