NBA Betting Free Picks: Minnesota @ Dallas
Added on Feb 05, 2010 by Jack Thurman in
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With sportsbooks giving us a nice selection of NBA betting opportunities for Friday, we’ll focus on a Western Conference battle between the Dallas Mavericks and Minnesota Timberwolves. Mavs are currently in third place in the Western Conference, though only three games separate them from the eighth place teams. The Twolves are scraping the bottom with the worst record in the conference and the second worst mark in the NBA:
Minnesota Timberwolves at Dallas Mavericks
February 5, 5:35 PM Pacific
Despite their SU success, the Mavs are one of the worst sports betting pointspread investments in the league on their home floor. Their 15-8 SU home mark isn’t bad, but they’re a downright pathetic 5-18 against the spread at American Airlines Arena. In this price range (favored by -9′ to -12) they’re 0-3 ATS despite winning all three spots straight up. As a favorite, they’re a very uninspiring 13-23 ATS and 7-12 against the number when playing a team with a losing record. Much of this place is a simple position against the Mavs on their home floor, where they’ve lost the money in 14 of their last 17 assignments. Overall, they’ve been burning money for their backers lately with only 3 pointspread covers in their past 16 games.
Obviously, the TWolves aren’t the best team in the league but they do bring some upside to the table in this matchup. For one thing, they last played on 1/31 so they’ll be rested and ready to go. There are some matchup advantages as well–Dallas’ biggest liability is their inside game and Kevin Love and Al Jefferson are just the sort of players to take advantage of this deficiency. Potentially making matters worse is the status of Dirk Nowitski, who is currently listed as ‘questionable’ with an injured thumb. TWolves have covered a respectable 7 of their last 11 games overall and enter this contest off a two game SU/ATS winning streak. Head to head matchup results perfectly underscore the Mavs’ problem with getting a margin over weaker teams–Dallas has won the L3 games on their home floor SU, but has failed to cover in all. Minnesota will make this a reasonably competitive game, and given their pitiful home performance YTD the Mavs have no business as -11 favorites against anyone.
Bet Minnesota +11 over Dallas
