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Something has to give here. The Kings are 12-5 ATS as a road favorite, while the Jazz are 9-0 ATS as a home underdog. However, the big news for this game is that the Jazz will be without Lauri Markkanen (back), Jordan Clarkson (finger) and Collin Sexton (hamstring). That leaves the likes of Talen Horton-Tucker, Kelly Olynyk and Walker Kessler to lead their scoring attack. Don’t expect them to have enough firepower to keep this close.
The Jazz’s depth chart is ugly for this game. Lauri Markkanen (back), Jordan Clarkson (finger) and Collin Sexton (hamstring) have all been ruled out, robbing the team of three of their top scoring options. Agbaji has been playing more lately while the Jazz deal with injuries, leaving him to log at least 29 minutes in each of the last four games. During that span, he scored at least 14 points three times. The Kings rank inside the top-10 in the league in pace of play and inside the bottom-10 in defensive rating, so when you combine that with the high likelihood of added minutes and shot attempts for Ogbaji, the over is the way to go.
All of the models disagree with me, but Utah's top three scorers in Lauri Markkanen (25.4 ppg), Jordan Clarkson (20.8 ppg) and Collin Sexton (14.3 ppg) are all out so I'm not sure how the Jazz will hold up their end of the bargain to get this close to 240 total points scored.
Walker Kessler has been a double double machine in Utah. The rookie Center has recorded 18 double doubles while only starting 32 games. He has improved every month of the as well, posting double doubles in six of his last seven games, while averaging 12.7 PPG and 11.7 RPG during the month of March. The Jazz could also be without Larui Markkanen tonight who is Questionable to suit up. This would bode well for Kessler as he is averaging 12.6 PPG and 12.0 RPG in games Markkanen has been inactive. Kessler has four consecutive double doubles in games Lauri has missed. This is a nice match up against a Kings team that allow the fourth most points in the paint (53.8 per game).