Mavs vs TWolves NBA Game Analysis and Pick

The Dallas Mavericks started the season as the dark horse candidate to win the Western Conference and now they sit just 3 games back of conference leader, the Los Angeles Lakers. Tonight they are in the Target Center to play the Minnesota Timberwolves. The Mavericks have owned the TWolves of late winning twelve straight meetings and eight straight in Minnesota.

Dallas Mavericks -6½ Over 207
Minnesota Timberwolves +6½ Under 207

The NBA betting Odds makers like the Mavs chances to make it 13 in a row as they list Dallas as -7 point favorites. The predicted game total is 207 points.

Dallas has run up a 43-21 record this season on strength of another strong season by Dirk Nowitzki, and the big German is heating up for a strong finish, he’s scored at least 27 in six of his last seven games. This year Nowitzki has had some nice help; Jason Kidd continues to defy father time and is averaging almost 10 assists and almost 6 boards a game, Shawn Marion’s numbers are down but he’s still useful in stretches. The man that will be the one to put the Mavs over this year could be Carron Butler, who came over in a trade from Washington with Brendan Haywood. Butler’s defensive prowess will be a huge help when the inevitable, Dallas-Lakers playoff showdown happens.

While they are racking up the wins, they haven’t been as kind to NBA betting fans, sitting at 27-36-1 against the spread but their ATS record is a product of being overvalued at home, away from the American Airlines Arena they are a solid 20-13 ATS.

The Minnesota Timberwolves are languishing at the bottom of the Western Conference, a place Minnesota fans have become all too familiar with since Kevin Garnett left town. Things started to go bad for the Timberwolves around draft time, they had the fifth and sixth pick in the NBA Entry draft, instead of filling their needs they took Ricky Rubio and Jonny Flynn. Flynn has been a nice addition to the team but Rubio refused to leave the sunny beaches of Spain to play in the snow and cold of Minneapolis. Not only did this leave a huge hole in the lineup that the draft could have plugged, it put the rest of the league on notice that new TWolves GM David Kahn had no idea what he was doing. If you have an incompetent GM, free agents don’t want to sign with you and your rookies leave at the first opportunity. This has been a rough season for Minnesota but it looks like Kahn will have a crack at a top 3 pick this year, for the sake of Minnesota fans, let’s hope he doesn’t screw it up.

The Timberwolves are 32-31 ATS, which means the bookmakers have them pretty much figure out, with half of the games falling on one side and half falling on the other side of the line. Minnesota has been reasonably good against the Southwest Division, covering 4 of the last 5 ATS.

Head to head, Dallas is 7-0 ATS in the past 7 games in Minnesota and I really like their chances to make it 8-0. The number is on the nice side of the NBA key number of 7, I don’t see Minnesota keeping it close enough to try to win it at the foul line. Dallas should win by 7 or more.

NBA Betting Free Pick: Dallas Mavericks -6½