San Antonio at Houston
Time: 8:30 PM (CT), ESPN
Spread: HOU -8
Total: 214
Odds c/o 5dimes
The San Antonio Spurs have won eight of its past 10 games to improve to 19-9 on the season. The Spurs are No. 3 in the Western Conference and travel to the Toyota Center to face the Conference-leading 22-4 Houston Rockets. Houston is 8-point favorites in the game, and looking at the dominance Mike D’Antoni’s team has shown, it is not hard to understand why NBA oddsmakers so favor the Rockets.
Houston (22-4) has only become a more impressive team since the return of Chris Paul. Paul gives the Rockets essentially a second point guard on the floor, with James Harden still commanding plenty of the offensive workload, both in terms of Beard’s scoring and his creation for his teammates. Mike D’Antoni is one to basically master engineer an offense, and Houston does rank No. 2 in the West in scoring at 114.8 points per game.
Most impressively, however, Houston’s defense has been strong and stringent, allowing just 103.7 per game and helping Houston maintain the league’s second-best point differential (+11.0). Houston is absolutely rolling, and the only naysayers are questioning the team’s ability to maintain this in the postseason, as D’Antoni’s teams are known to be regular season juggernauts.
With a pairing like Paul and Harden, the passing has been crisp and the Rockets are clicking on the strength of its array of three-point shooters, all finding easy looks with Harden attacking and finding so much resistance in the form of double teams. Houston basically has a formula for offensive dominance, and the only real remaining question is whether the team is strong enough on “D” to slow a team like Golden State and contend for the Conference Title.
Harden has been absolutely incredible and is the leading MVP candidate at this point probably. His averages of 31.6 points, 5.1 rebounds, and 9.4 assists go along with his 1.85 steals per game, as he plays off the defense around him to play passing lanes and get the Rockets out in transition. Harden’s PER is 31.6, nearly double the league average, and Paul has been quietly reinventing himself with 16.2 points and 11.0 assists per game, averaging a double-double for the first time since his days as a New Orleans Hornet so many years ago.
Shooting guard Eric Gordon and power forward Ryan Anderson are the perfect sharpshooters to offset the play of Harden and Paul, while Clint Capela has become a real force at the 5-spot. Capela was said to be “Two years away from being two years away” on draft night, but he has emerged far quicker and even made Dwight Howard expendable to the Rockets two seasons ago. The big man is averaging 13.5 points, 11 rebounds and 1.8 blocks per game in being a real difference maker with Houston’s defensive attack. The potential for the Rockets to walk away from this season as title winners are not unfathomable with the way the role players complement its two main stars.
San Antonio (19-9) had its four-game win streak snapped last outing in a 95-89 loss to the Dallas Mavericks. The Spurs added Kawhi Leonard back to its lineup, but replayed just 16 minutes as they take their time rounding their superstar back in to shape. Leonard looked good, scoring 13 points on 6 of 12 shooting and coming up with six boards, an assist, a steal and a block. LaMarcus Aldridge will need to cede some of the looks that have come to him, but he shot 9 of 23 for 23 points and 13 rebounds in the loss. Leonard’s return should do one thing that really benefits San Antonio though, and that is make Rudy Gay a sixth man.
The Spurs have needed an explosive bench scorer, and demoting Gay to the second unit will solve nearly as many problems as injecting Leonard back to the starters. Kawhi Leonard is arguably the league’s best “Two-way” talent, along with guys like Jimmy Butler and Giannis Antetokounmpo. Leonard should only make San Antonio back into the legitimate contender it still is.
