Art Aronson – AAA Sports NBA Picks & Plays

This is a 10* on COLORADO

These sides played to a 1-1 draw the last time they met. But Colorado has to be “licking its chops” heading into this rematch. That’s because San Jose finds itself in a terrible way, winless in eight straight matches, and they just took a 6-1 thrashing at the hands of the Portland Timbers. Colorado should look at tonight’s game as a must-win. The Rapids are 6th in the Western Conference table and coming off a clean sheet victory over the LA Galaxy, 2-0. While San Jose has a decent showing in the MLS is Back Tournament, they’ve been putrid since the regular season returned. The Earthquakes have conceded 23 goals while scoring only seven of their own. They haven’t won any regular season game and recently have taken three terrible losses where they were outscored 18-3 by LAFC, Seattle & Portland. Coach Matias Almeyda admitted there is a huge gap between the Quakes and the top teams in this league. After going on the road for three straight games, Colorado will be glad to be back home and should win convincingly tonight. Play on COLORADO

AAA

This is a 6* on DAL +1.5 (PUCK LINE)

An early 3-0 hole was just too deep for the Stars to climb out of in Game 2. But despite falling behind by three goals in the first period, they did still battle back to make it a one-goal game in the end. That means anyone that had them on the puck line would have cashed. We had the Lightning in Game 2, so we won too. For Game 3, we’re taking Dallas +1.5 (puck line) as this team has proven itself to be remarkably resilient throughout the playoffs. For Game 2, we talked about how the Lightning hadn’t dropped two straight games since coming into the bubble. Dallas has done so just two times and the first instance was the first two games after the restart. Since then, they are 14-7 in all games and six of their last eight games have been decided by one goal. One of the two non-one goal games was their Game 1 victory over the Lightning, which was 4-1. It’s a fairly steep price to lay to get the +1.5 with Dallas here, but definitely worth it as they’ve gone 2-0 when the series is tied this postseason. Play on DALLAS

AAA

This is a 10* on MIA

Game 3 of this series marked the first loss in regulation for Miami since the playoffs began. While they’ve had a “nasty habit” of falling behind in games, the Heat still lead this Eastern Conference Finals 2 games to 1 over Boston. We see no way that the Heat don’t improve upon their shooting from the last game as they sank just 12 of 44 three-point attempts and finished with a 38.8 overall FG%. Despite all that, they were still within five points in the final minute. Obviously, having lost just two games since the playoffs started, the Heat have yet to drop two in a row. The last time they suffered back to back losses was right before the playoffs began, in the final two seeding games, neither of which they really put forth much effort in. The extra rest the teams got between Games 3 and 4 is interesting. Miami is 12-3 ATS the L3 seasons when playing with three or more days rest. Boston hasn’t won two straight since opening the last round 2-0 vs. Toronto. We don’t see Miami falling behind by double digits again, so taking the points is the way to go tonight in an obvious bounce back spot. Play on MIAMI

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