NBA Prediction Minnesota at OK City

Line: OK -7′, 215

I’m soooo glad the WNBA started last week.
I can’t take too much more NBA.
Especially Boston head coach Joe Mazzula.
This past weekend, I saw an online conversation that started with the title, “Fire Mazzulla!”
It’s typical behavior for sports fans to blame a head coach and want to see him fired when their favorite team loses.
And the calls for the ax to fall are even more rabid when it’s not local fans of a team doing their Queen of Hearts, “Off with their heads!” impersonation but comes instead from sports bettors who lost their money and are looking for someone to blame.

What was surprising about the Mazzulla post is that there wasn’t much debate. Usually two sides go back and forth arguing with each other, but Joe didn’t have very many defenders.
I side with his detractors.
He is solely to blame for the Celtics losing their best player when he kept Tatum in a game in which the Celtics had no chance of winning instead of pulling him so he didn’t get injured (which is exactly what happened.)

And then there was his inexcusable move in game four. The Celtics were desperate and down 0-2 coming into game 3 in New York. Peyton Pritchard scored a TEAM HIGH 23 points, and the Celtics won.
How did Boston head coach Joe Mazzulla reward him?
By cutting his game four minutes in HALF.
(He actually ended up with a little more than half, but only because Mazzulla put him in for the final two minutes after Tatum got hurt and had to leave the game.)
The Celtics lost game four AND their star.
And then the series.

It’s being said that the Celtics won the championship last year despite having Mazzulla not, in part, because of him.
Hard to argue against that point after his postseason performance in this year’s playoffs, including blowing 20-point leads in game one AND two at home, and then the final humiliation of a 38 point loss in the game where they were eliminated.

Min at OK

I’m starting this series off with a play on the Dog and the Over.

During the postseason, OKC is winning by a ridiculous average of 30 points per game.
Thirty points!
This includes blowout wins of 51 vs Memphis, and 43 and 32 vs Denver, but despite that I’m going to take Minnesota in game one.
The Timberwolves are 4-1 SU on the road in the postseason and 4-1 ATS.
During the regular season, the teams split, with 2-2 SU. Minnesota’s losses were by 8 and 7 pts.
At OKC, the Timberwolves went 1-1, winning by 3 points and losing by 8.
In that eight-point loss, they turned the ball over 23 times. In the other three meetings (two wins and the seven-point loss), they turned the ball over 9, 13, and 13 times, an average of 11.6. So it’s pretty clear what Minnesota needs to do to stay competitive Tuesday night – don’t have more than twice as many turnovers as they normally would.

I think they’ll keep it close in game one.
From my own handicapping models I have a play I track for picking sides in the postseason only.
The Thunder have qualified for it twice and are 0-2.

For my play on the Over, here are the total points scored for the four regular season games:
259, 253, 217, and 218.
That’s an average of 236 PPG.

Yes, teams play tighter D during the playoffs, but this game’s number of 215 is 21 points fewer than their season average.
That’s too many.

From my own handicapping models for picking totals, this game qualifies as an Over for one of them. The record for this play in the postseason is 25-21, a slight winning edge.

My plays:

Min +7′
Min/OKC Ov 215

NBA recap: 1-1
Record: 15-17
Review: Despite a big decrease in minutes and a poor shooting night, Pritchard still managed to put in 12 points (no thanks to Mazzulla) to get me a W on my prop bet. The prop saved my day since my other bet, Boston -6, lost.