NBA Betting – San Antonio Spurs at Houston Rockets
By Zack Garrison in News
Updated: January 17, 2018 at 9:40 am ESTPublished:
San Antonio Spurs (-2.5, o/u 204) at Houston Rockets
The San Antonio Spurs (53-26, 21-18 Away) are heating up at the right time, winning nine straight and moving within half a game of the Southwest Division lead. Tonight, the Spurs can usurp top spot with a win over the current division leaders, the Houston Rockets (53-25, 28-10 Home), at the Toyota Center (8:00 PM Eastern).
Tonight’s game is the second half of a home-and-home for the squads. On Wednesday, San Antonio downed Houston 110-98 in San Antonio, led by point guard Tony Parker’s 27 points.
“I was mad from [Tuesday’s win over the Thunder],” said Parker. “I didn’t play a lot [on Tuesday], so I felt I had a lot of juice. For a back to back, I felt I had to be aggressive, tried to carry the team.”
As for tonight’s game, Parker knows that it will be a playoff atmosphere at the Toyota Center. “[T]hey’re going to play with a lot of energy and we’re gonna have to match that, and it’s going to be, like I said, a great test before the playoffs,” said the point guard.
The Rockets haven’t been playing badly of late, winning seven of their last nine. But it hasn’t been enough to keep the Spurs at bay.
The squad is trying not to worry too much about seeding in the final stretch of the regular season, instead focusing on improving as a team.
“We’ve just got to play our basketball,” Houston guard James Harden said. “Not worry about what’s going on in the standings and things like that; just focus on ourselves, and we’ll be all right.”
Tonight, the Rockets could benefit from improved rebounding play. On Wednesday, the glass proved to be the team’s downfall, with the Rockets getting outrebounded 47-39.
Looking at the trends, the Spurs have won nine in a row SU, as mentioned, but they’ve lost four straight and seven of eight in Houston. The Rockets are also a solid 23-15 ATS at home, while the Spurs are just 20-19 ATS on the road. The home Rockets plus the points (+2.5) looks like better value.
(Photo credit:Â Jose Garcia (Flickr: Dwight Howard And Chandler Parsons) [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons. Photo has been cropped.)
Sports Writer
Zack is a tour guide whose favorite sports are football, baseball, and golf. He enjoys giving obnoxious commentary during games and hopes to some day write a book about sports. His favorite underdog victory was the Diamondbacks beating the Yankees in game 7 of the World Series.
