NBA Betting – Cleveland Cavaliers at Washington Wizards

Cleveland Cavaliers (-3, 198 o/u) at Washington Wizards

The Cleveland Cavaliers stood pat at the trade deadline. Now, LeBron James and co. will swoop into the nation’s capital tonight to face the Washington Wizards at the Verizon Center (8:00 p.m. Eastern) in a matchup of Eastern Conference contenders.

This will be the first game back after All-Star Weekend for both teams. The Wizards (33-21) headed into the break losing six of ten, and they made a minor move yesterday (acquiring Ramon Sessions from Sacramento in exchange for Andre Miller) to try to jump start the offense.

The move boosted their NBA Title odds slightly, but isn’t likely to have a huge impact on the team, as Sessions is having one of the worst seasons of his career.

Tonight’s game will be the third of the season between Cleveland and Washington; each team has won one. Most recently (Nov. 26), the Cavs downed the Wizards, 113-87, with James scoring 29 points and adding ten rebounds and eight assists.

“We played basketball the right way,” James said that night. “We shared the ball. We defended. We sustained effort for as close to 48 minutes as possible.”

Cleveland comes in at 33-22 on the season and 8-2 in its last ten.

But they could be without power forward Kevin Love, who is day-to-day with an eye issue. Love leads Cleveland in rebounding at 10.4 per game, and the team is just 1-2 without him on the floor.

Washington is suffering from its own injury woes, of course; shooting guard Bradley Beal is out indefinitely with a stress fracture in his lower right fibula. Also, power forward Kris Humphries  missed practice on Tuesday with a back injury and is officially listed day-to-day.

Looking at the trends, Washington is 4-9 ATS in its last 13 against Cleveland. But the Cavs are 3-7 ATS in their last ten on the road. Without Beal, the Wizards struggle to score, and the over/under has stayed under in five of their last six games.

I expect the streaking Cavs to lay a beat-down on the Beal-less Wizards. Take Cleveland and lay the points (-3).

(Photo credit: Keith Allison (Flickr: Bradley Beal, John Wall) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons. Photo has been cropped.)