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With the NBA regular season almost over, this is my last chance to bet on the bad teams no one else wants to watch. No game captures that sentiment more than the Houston Rockets vs. Portland Trail Blazers matchup tonight, in a battle between two of the elite tanking squads in the league. I’m eyeing this game for my best bet of tonight’s NBA slate, with a total of seven games on the board.
Houston Rockets vs. Portland Trail Blazers:
The Rockets are coming off a 29-point loss to the Mavericks without Luka Doncic, so betting on Houston as favorites may be a risky play. I’m still far more comfortable backing the Rockets than the Trail Blazers with Portland losing 11 of the last 13 games since the All-Star Break. The Blazers went just 4-9 against the spread in that span, including eight losses of 30 points or more, and put up a league-worst -22.2 net rating since the All-Star Break.
No team performed worse against the spread than Portland this season, with a -3.8 average spread differential according to Cleaning the Glass and the second-worst ATS record in the league. Houston improved to the 11th best spread differential when playing against teams with a bottom-10 net rating, compared to the Blazers who rank in the bottom-10 of that metric with a -0.9 spread differential against bottom-10 teams.
That makes sense when considering the Blazers have far less to play for than the Rockets. Portland is likely gearing up to reload the roster around a healthy Damian Lillard this offseason, and the team is being cautious with injured players like Jusuf Nurkic and Anfernee Simons. Even trade deadline acquisitions Josh Hart and Justise Winslow are among the nine Portland players listed out for tonight’s matchup , while Houston’s injury report is as clean as it has been all season. Hart in particular would be a huge boost for Portland in this game, as he’s put up just under 20 points per game in his first 13 games with the Blazers.
Houston leads the league in shooting frequency at the rim and on non-corner three-pointers, two areas of vulnerability for Portland’s defense. Blazers opponents shot 37.3% from beyond the arc this season, the highest accuracy in the league, while getting to the rim at a top-10 frequency according to Cleaning the Glass.
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Christian Wood ranks in the 86th percentile among bigs with a 68.4% eFG% since the All-Star Break, and he shot nearly 48% on three-pointers during that 12-game stretch. If Wood comes even close to replicating his 39-point performance from earlier this week, the Rockets should be in good shape for this game.
Tonight’s matchup will be only the sixth game where Houston is listed as favorites this season, and the Rockets went 4-1 straight up and 3-2 ATS in the previous five games as favorites, including 1-0 as road favorites.
The Blazers give up the easiest opponent shots based on Cleaning the Glass’s location eFG%, and the Rockets lead the league in offensive location eFG% this season. While there’s no guarantee the Rockets will knock down those open shots, I’m comfortable taking the favorites since even a decent shooting night for Wood and Houston’s shooters should result in a comfortable win and cover.
EDGE: Houston Rockets -3.5 (1 Unit)
