NBA Basketball Preview: Portland Trailblazers at Orlando Magic

Added on Mar 07, 2011 by Jack Thurman in

NBA

The Portland Trailblazers leave the magnificent Rose City for a trip to the garish Disney-fied vibe of Orlando, Florida tonight as the face the hometown Magic. The Magic will be without frontcourt monster Dwight Howard, who’ll be serving a one game suspension for his large number of technical fouls this season. Orlando is currently in 4th place in the Eastern Conference while the Blazers are holding down 7th place in the West.

Portland Trailblazers at Orlando Magic
March 7, 2011 4:05 PM Pacific

Howard’s absence is glaringly obvious just from looking at the pointspread on this game–the Magic are -1′ point home favorites. The last time Portland played in Orlando (December 2009) the Magic were -9 home favorites. For that matter, they were -3 road favorites when they played the Blazers in Portland this past December. So is Dwight Howard really worth that big of an adjustment in the pointspread? Yes and no….in the longterm, definitely since he’s the most dominant inside presence in the game and creates matchup headaches for pretty much every team in the league. In the short term, however, we’re thinking linesmakers have overvalued his absence likely to compensate for the ‘public perception’ that the Magic are dead in the water without him.

The Blazers are a solid team but are much better on their tough Rose Garden home court than on the road where they’ve got a losing record both SU and ATS. They’re only 7-15 SU/9-12 ATS as an underdog and this is a particularly bad price range for them. As a road underdog of 3 or less they’re 1-4 SU/1-3-1 against the spread this season. Orlando is nothing special from a pointspread standpoint but their recent loss to Chicago notwithstanding the Magic have been playing very solid basketball lately–in addition to that monumental comeback against the Heat in Miami they’ve won 9 of their last 13 SU. With division leading Miami reeling of late they’ve got an opportunity to make up some ground there. As we’ve discussed in the past, teams typically respond well to ‘short term’ absences by superstars and that’s what we expect to see here. They catch a scheduling break tonight against Portland who really lacks the frontcourt depth to exploit Howard’s absence. LaMarcus Aldridge will probably have a monster game without Howard in the middle, but Orlando will still have enough weapons to win and cover the small price here.

Bet Orlando Magic -1′ over Portland Trailblazers