basketball | Monday, February 13, 2023 2:26 PM (Revised at: Monday, February 13, 2023 2:27 PM)

Portland Trail Blazers vs Los Angeles Lakers Best Bet: Refreshed Lakers Make a Show in Moda Center

Aleksa Drobnjak

Portland Trail Blazers vs Los Angeles Lakers Best Bet: Monday, February 13th

Another battle for Play-in spots will be fought tonight in ex-Rose Garden (Moda Center) where the Trail Blazers will host the Lakers. Both teams are having a turbulent season and are wagering their options for the future because they’ve been underperforming for quite some time.

In this article:

Portland Trail Blazers vs Los Angeles Lakers Preview
Portland Trail Blazers vs Los Angeles Lakers Best Bet

Portland Trail Blazers vs Los Angeles Lakers Preview

Wed, Feb 10th. 3:00 am (UK time)

The Blazers are trying desperately to get into one of the play-in spots but always lack decent endgames. They’ve been through their share of issues with injured players as well.
The Blazers are very weak against the strong teams in the paint where they are allowing their opponents almost 60 points per game. A. Davis will know how to exploit these weaknesses and we expect him to be one of the leading players tonight, furthermore, J. Nurkic will miss tonight’s game due to an injury as well.

The Blazers are scoring 117 PPG while having a 56% effective shooting percentage which is decent, but most of their problems come from defence. They are allowing their opponents 117.5 PPG and letting them score a lot of points in fastbreaks (16.6 PPG). Their weak defence and potentially good offence give us a good foundation for our tip tonight as we are expecting them to play their normal game. They will be missing J. Nurkic (Hamstring injury), I. Badji (knee injury) and J. Winslow (Ankle injury).

The Lakers have finally moved R. Westbrook and are now in a better position to give a better-supporting cast to Lebron James. The Lakers have won against the Warriors in the last round with decent games from new-old faces R. Hachimura and D. Russell. We expect them to be on top of their game tonight when James returns to play. He is listed as “questionable” for the moment but we are expecting him to play.

Portland Trail Blazers vs Los Angeles Lakers Best Bet

The main total point line has opened at 236.5 points and is growing steadily. We are not sure what to expect when L. James returns and how things will shape out with the new roster, but in our eyes, if that game is tonight we are in for an assists fest for James and a lot of open jumpers and fastbreaks for the rest of the team which sets us up for our bet.