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December 2, 2011 - by David Hess
[sung to the tune of something resembling the 12 Days Of Christmas]
On the Opening Day on Christmas, the NBA gave to me…
Fiiiive golden games,
Four featuring playoff squads,
Three teams from California,
Two classic rivalries,
And a rematch of the NBA Finals.
The NBA confirmed Friday that the shortened season will tip off in dramatic fashion, with five Christmas Day games to open the slate. Several of the games are absolute blockbusters, including the Bulls visiting the Lakers, and the Mavericks hosting the Heat in a rematch of last year’s NBA Finals. And even the least interesting affair still features everybody’s favorite dunk machine, Blake Griffin.
Matchup Time Line Implied Title Odds (w/ juice) 2010-11 Rating Head to Head
Boston Celtics 5.9% 103.2 Bos 8-0
@ New York Knicks 11:00 AM Pick 3.7% 100.1
Miami Heat 30.0% 105.0
@ Dallas Mavericks 1:30 PM Pick 9.6% 104.6 Dal 6-2
Chicago Bulls 11.7% 104.5
@ Los Angeles Lakers 4:00 PM LA -2.5 16.9% 103.7 tie 1-1
Orlando Magic 4.7% 102.9
@ Oklahoma City Thunder 7:00 PM OKC -5.5 12.7% 103.3 tie 1-1
Los Angeles Clippers 1.4% 98.3
@ Golden State Warriors 9:30 PM GS -2.5 0.4% 99.0 tie 2-2
The spread and NBA title odds info above was taken from a leading sportsbook. The title odds contain significant juice, so can’t be taken at face value. They are just here to give you an idea of the relative strength of the teams. The 2010-11 Rating is our NBA Predictive Power Rating.
The rumor mills surrounding the Knicks has been running at full throttle since the saved season was announced, particularly in relation to Chris Paul. If CP3 joins the Knickerbockers, they’ll have a Big 3 of Paul, Amare Stoudemire, and Carmelo Anthony to counter Boston’s Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett, and Ray Allen. New York’s trio will be much younger, but Boston’s will be backed up by Rajon Rondo, a great player in his own right.
Of course, this could be much ado about nothing, and Paul could stay in New Orleans. Until he’s actually wearing a Knicks uniform, we’ll have to assume he’s still a Hornet. In that case, we’ll give the edge to the team that swept last year’s season series, 8 games to zero. Our Pick: Boston Celtics.
The Heat were embarrassed in the Finals last season by their distinctly un-clutch performance against the Mavs. They’ve had all summer to stew over it.
That could mean one of two things. One, they’ll be out for revenge, and without the pressure of an NBA title on the line, they’ll be able to exact it. Or two, the pressure of the title will be replaced by the personal pressure they’re putting on themselves to prove they can beat the Mavs, and that pressure will sink them.
We lean more towards the latter. That, the observation that the Mavericks seemed to match up well with the Heat last year, and the fact that the game is in Dallas all combine to hand the edge to Dirk Nowitski and company. Our Pick: Dallas Mavericks.
If you love guard play, this is the game for you. Kobe Bryant and Derrick Rose finished first and second in the NBA in Usage Rate last season, a stat which measures the percent of a team’s possessions that are used up by an individual player. So there’s an argument to be made that these two were the most important players to their respective teams. They’d at least be the hardest to replace.
Of course, similarly difficult to replace is Phil Jackson, who retired after last year’s playoffs. The biggest question to start the season for the Lakers is whether Mike Brown and Kobe Bryant can forge a productive working relationship, and whether Brown can get as much out of his troops as Jackson did. We anticipate there might be a couple chemistry issues to start the year, but Kobe can take over in the meantime. Our Pick: Los Angeles Lakers.
This game is projected to be the least evenly matched of the day, with the current spread being a 5.5-point edge for the Thunder. While the three earlier games all feature former NBA MVP trophy winners, this game features a player who has a decent chance to win his first this year — Kevin Durant.
During last year’s playoffs, there was some frustration among writers who thought that OKC did a poor job of distributing touches among their stars, with Russell Westbrook shouldering too much of the load. It’ll be interesting to see if anything has changed in the offseason. Given the shortened preseason training camp, our guess is we’ll see more of the same. Our Pick: Oklahoma City to win, but Orlando Magic to cover +5.5.
Let’s be honest. You’re going to be tuning into this one to watch Blake Griffin dunk, not because you are all that interested in who wins this game. But the Clippers may be better than you think. They closed last year relatively strong, beating Memphis twice and Oklahoma City once in their last six games, and ending the year 15th in our Last 10 Games Power Rating.
But they struggled away from home, as they had the 7th-biggest gap between home and road performance, according to our Home Advantage Power Rating. If they can solve their road woes, and continue building on their late successes last season, they could shoot for the playoffs in 2012. Still, the Clippers struggled out of the gate last year, and with shortened prep time this season, they may do the same. Our Pick: Golden State Warriors.
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