Thursday, December 17
Phoenix @ Portland
Recommendation: Take the Suns +2

The Blazers are fairly adept at beating the weaker teams in the NBA. Despite suffering through a myriad of injuries since the beginning of training camp – Nicolas Batum, Travis Outlaw, Greg Oden and Rudy Fernandez will all be in street clothes again tonight – Portland is still good enough to knock off weaklings. In fact, the Blazers 15 wins so far this season have largely come against weaklings: Sacramento, Indiana, New Jersey, Chicago, Minnesota (three times), Detroit, Charlotte, New Orleans, Memphis. Their quality wins? Houston twice, Oklahoma City once and San Antonio when the Spurs were injury riddled and reeling. Portland is not a team that is beating quality foes very often these days.

The Suns have struggled in recent road tilts, losing five straight on the highway. But look at who they’ve played! At Denver, Dallas, the LA Lakers and Cleveland in their last four road tilts; all teams that are significantly better than the squad they’ll face tonight. Suns forward Grant Hill: “We’ve been playing well at home and after this Portland game we’ll be home for a while and it would be nice to get a good road win against a good team. We’ve got a good opportunity (Thursday) night.” Expect the Suns to take advantage of that opportunity with the straight up victory here.

Take Phoenix.