NBA Betting – San Antonio Spurs at OKC Thunder

San Antonio Spurs (-5.5, 216.5 o/u) at Oklahoma City Thunder

The Oklahoma City Thunder (42-35, 27-11 Home) are currently half a game above the New Orleans Pelicans for the final playoff spot in the Western Conference. The good news is that three of their remaining five games come against sub-.500 teams; the bad news is that, tonight, OKC has to face the red-hot San Antonio Spurs (51-26, 20-18 Away) at Chesapeake Arena in Oklahoma (8:00 PM Eastern).

The Spurs come into tonight’s game on a seven-game win streak and crushed the NBA-leading Warriors (107-92) last time out. Kawhi Leonard led the team with 26 points, seven steals, and five rebounds, while the ageless Tim Duncan chipped in with 19 points and seven boards.

“Kawhi was magnificent at both ends of the court,” San Antonio coach Gregg Popovich said. “He is really playing confidently, but he hasn’t forgotten to predicate his game on defense and on the boards. It kind of fuels him offensively.”

Though the Spurs are still sitting sixth in the West, the standings are exceedingly clogged from second to sixth and the win streak has moved the defending champs within two games of second-place Houston.

The Thunder, meanwhile, have lost five of their last six games, including three in a row against the Mavericks, Grizzlies, and Rockets. The slump has the team perilously close to falling out of the playoffs. Russell Westbrook’s MVP crusade has continued, but it hasn’t been enough to make up for a multitude of injuries and a lack of a supporting cast.

OKC was down as many as 13 to Houston on the weekend but didn’t quit; the team had a chance at the tie in the dying seconds, but Westbrook couldn’t get a late three to fall.  “It just says that we at least have some fight in us,” Westbrook said after the near comeback. “Unfortunately it wasn’t enough.”

These two teams have split the last ten games in the series, but the Spurs have won and covered three of the last four. San Antonio is currently a 5.5-point road favorite for tonight’s game due, in part, to OKC’s injury woes (which includes Kevin Durant, Serge Ibaka, and Nick Collison).

With the Spurs on fire and the Thunder struggling and shorthanded, the Spurs minus the points looks like the better play.

(Photo credit: Mike (Flickr: Spurs-Magic078) [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons. Photo may appear cropped.)