Los Angeles Clippers vs. Los Angeles Lakers NBA Picks

NBA Betting Trends

NBA – February 14th

The final game of the first half of the NBA betting campaign takes place at Staples Center on Thursday, where the Los Angeles Clippers and the Los Angeles Lakers will send the league into its All-Star Break.

The Clips are the road team in name only in this one, as they are glad to be back home at Staples Center after spending the better part of three weeks on the road for the awards ceremonies taking place in Tinseltown. The team is just as thankful to have back all of its stars. G Chris Paul and F Blake Griffin sat out several games on that road trip, as did G Jamal Crawford. Not only are all three back, but so too is G Chauncey Billups, who has spent the mass majority of the last season and a half on the shelf with various injuries. This is a team that already has 38 wins and is well on its way to being one of the top seeds in the playoffs in the Western Conference. The Clippers have won three in a row dating back to the final two games of that road trip, and the only reason they aren’t on a three-game ATS winning streak as well is because they lost by the hook to the Houston Rockets last night.

It’s amazing that everyone still thinks that the ship is sinking for the Lakers right now. Simply put, that isn’t the case. Yes, they’re still three-games below .500, and yes, they are most certainly an underdog tonight, but when you really look back at what they have done over the course of the last few weeks, you have to be impressed. They were just 17-25 following a loss to the Memphis Grizzlies, and that dropped the team to 5-15 on the season away from home. LA rolled off three straight victories here at Staples Center, and it followed that up by taking a very respectable four out of seven on the road. Now, the team came home on a night that G Kobe Bryant scored just four points and beat the Phoenix Suns for its eighth win in 11 games. Keep that up over the course of the rest of the year, and the Lakers will finish with right around 45 wins, and likely a playoff spot. That’s all that the team could ask for at this point.

Prediction:

If you think that Kobe is going to score just four points in this one, you’re crazy. We’d bet that he has more than four by the 6:00 mark of the first quarter. If Bryant and the Lakers keep doing what they have been doing, even without F Pau Gasol in the fold, they could pull off the upset in this one and send a definitive message to the rest of the Western Conference that they are a legitimate contender still. Lakers 106 – Clippers 104