Denver Nuggets at OKC Thunder

The OKC Thunder (53-11) are battling it out with the Cleveland Cavaliers (54-10) for the best record in the NBA with every other team far back in their rear view mirror. With the Cavs win over Milwaukee last night, they pulled one game ahead of the Thunder in the win column. Tonight, the Thunder look to pull back even with the Cavs, and in this battle between Jokic and Gilgeous- Alexander I’m going against OKC and taking the Denver Nuggets in the role of the Road Dog.

My unique handicapping systems didn’t serve me well last week as I dropped my last two games in the NBA.

The pendulum swings both ways, over time all systems even out to .500. Is this what’s happening to my WF1 method for identifying live Dogs to play?
I guess we’ll find out this week because I’m going to stick with what’s been working all season and hope last week’s losses were just a fluke.

Today WF1 says Denver should be the Fav.
The record for WF1 Rd teams this season is 37-21. That gives me a 63% edge on these plays.
Anything over 58% is worth a play for me, so I’m taking the Nuggets tonight.

The spread on tonight’s game is OKC -9.
OKC has won nine of their last 10.
Of those nine wins, six were enough to cover the spread in tonight’s game.

Denver has won six of their last 10.
In their four losses only one game would have registered as a loss using tonight’s spread of nine points. However, one of those losses was in their last game, by 24 pts, against tonight’s opponent.

In their first meeting this year, the Thunder came away with a Rd win by 25 pts.
In their second meeting, again on the Rd, Denver prevailed 224-122.
OKC leads the season series 2-1.
The Thunder’s average margin of victory this season, all games/all teams, is 13 points, and their average margin of victory over Denver is 24.5. Both numbers spell trouble for a Nuggets team getting only nine points tonight.

Like my two NBA picks last week, I don’t have solid stats in favor of this post, other than my WF1 win %. But while researching the game, EVERY analysis I read says take OKC, but sports books don’t stay in business by paying everybody, and I never like to go with the flow.
This won’t be an easy task for Denver, 15-18 ATS on the Rd and 7-9 as Dogs, to cover against an OKC team that’s 22-11-2 ATS at home and 40-21-4 ATS overall. But like I said above, the pendulum swings both ways and eventually all trends even out to .500.

So which trend starts to level out in tonight’s game – the Thunders terrific ATS numbers or my 63% WF1 system play?
We’ll have a better idea in about 10 hours from now.

My Play:
Den (Wait to buy. With the experts and the public all backing the Thunder there’s a better chance this line goes to -9′ or better than dropping to below 9 points. I’m going to monitor it throughout the day. If I see -8′ start to pop up, I’ll grab the +9 while they’re still out there.)

Recap: 0-2
Record: 6-6

Review:
Lost the NY/LAC game with 25 seconds left on the clock.
Lost the SA/SAC game with 30 seconds left on the clock. I had Under 233′. Q1 had 46 pts, Q2 had 52. Going into Q4, I was looking good despite a 73-pt Q3. As long as they stayed Under 65 in Q4 I’d get the win. And with Sacramento ahead by 19 points, they would be sure to slow the pace down and come away with an easy win. But when each team hit a meaningless three pointer with under a half a minute to go I lost.
It was that kind of a week.