NBA Betting – Los Angeles Clippers at Dallas Mavericks

Los Angeles Clippers at Dallas Mavericks (-2.5, 202.5 o/u) 

The road has gotten a little steeper for the Los Angeles Clippers (42-23, 18-14 away) lately with both Blake Griffin and Jamal Crawford sidelined. Luckily for the team, point guard Chris Paul has revved his engine since the injury troubles started, keeping the Clippers a solid 9-5 over their past 14 games.

Tonight, Paul and company will try to stay hot as they travel to Texas to face the suddenly slumping Dallas Mavericks (41-25, 21-11 home) at the American Airlines Center (8:30 p.m. Eastern).

Paul continued his strong play on Wednesday against Oklahoma City, dropping 33 points and nine dimes in L.A.’s 120-108 win. (The Clippers also picked up the ATS win as seven-point dogs.)

Paul didn’t have to shoulder the whole load, though; shooting guard J.J. Redick added 25 points on 6/14 shooting.

“With Blake out, with Jamal out, those shots have to go somewhere,” Redick told the team’s official website. “It’s playing minutes and getting good shots. Doc runs good stuff, playing with Chris makes it easy. There’s not a whole lot to it. I move a lot, probably. That’d be the other thing, just working off the ball.”

The Mavericks, meanwhile, are mired in a 2-5 slump over their past seven and have seen the San Antonio Spurs vault past them for sixth place in the Western Conference.  Most recently, they were embarrassed 127-94 at home by LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers.

“We’re [almost] out of the playoffs, which is unacceptable,” Amare Stoudemire told the team’s official website. “This is something that we can’t accept. … We’ve got to key into the details of the game of basketball, and we can’t cheat the game. We can’t [mess] around in shootarounds and practice and joke all the time, and figure that we’re going to win games.”

Stoudemire was exaggerating a bit as the Mavs still hold a five-game lead over ninth-place OKC. But both the Thunder and Pelicans are surging at the right time, meaning Dallas needs to string some wins together in order to keep themselves in a playoff spot.

Taking care of business against the shorthanded Clippers would be a good start. Unfortunately, the Clippers have won eight of the last ten head-to-head (and covered the spread in six, including the last two). The Mavs are currently 2.5-point favorites.

(Photo credit: Keith Allison (flickr) [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/legalcode]. Photo has been cropped.)