Saturday Night NBA

By Divol

Los Angeles Lakers v Phoenix Suns

30th May 01:30 GMT

This is the last game of the series and I will take yet again a Lakers win and Gasol Under on the rebounds. To be honest, today's decision to play Gasol's Under was the toughest, since the odds are really down and he can have at least one game that will break the bad run against the Suns for Gasol on the boards. Still, we just can't ignore the numbers here and I do think that Suns will play much more run and gun style at home and that means that many times it will be on other players, not the big guys, to take the boards.

As for the game, there are numbers of thoughts.  First of all, the league talked about how a short series can hurt the profit and even have an impact on cap room, so really long series aren't that much of a surprise and I believe that no one in the league will take a chance on Game 7 (just as it was last night in Boston). Second, looking at the refs, we see two out of the three best possible refs for the Lakers and one that is a suspect of not liking Boston, so again, favours the Lakers (if it's true that he doesn't like Boston of course).  Third, Lakers know that Boston won last night. A win tonight will give them the same time to rest and to prepare (almost the same), but a loss will force them to play on Monday yet again, leaving them almost no time to prepare for the Finals and they need that time. I just can't see Lakers being ok with Game 7 after Boston's win last night. Fourth is Nash comment about Game 7. It's a good thing for his team mates as they will try to support his statement that there will be a Game 7. But two things about that, first is that a player should believe in the ability to win the series, not just force a game 7 and second, and more importantly, you really don't want to give extra motivation to the Lakers.

Fisher and Artest reacted very well to the crowd calling (Fisher) and critic by Phil (Artest) in the series against Utah and Artest already commented that he and his team mates really didn't like Nash's comment about game 7. In the end and the final reason is that Lakers are the better team that toyed a bit with the Suns. In Game 5 they saw that despite leading by 18 points and been the better team by far, Suns can sneak up on you and they were a second away from playing OT. This close win was exactly what Lakers needed. They know now that if there will be a Game 7 and even if Lakers will play better, Suns can steal somehow a game and cause great upset and won't allow that.



Picks:

Lakers to win, 2.04 odds - 3 units play - Pinnacle

Gasol Under 10.5 rebounds, 1.71 odds 2.5 units play - Pinnacle

Divol