Rockets at Clippers
- Spread: Clippers -5.5
- Over/under: 235.5
- Time: 10:30 p.m. ET
- TV channel: TNT
What a night of basketball. In the first Thursday of the fall without NFL Thursday Night Football, the NBA has graced us with national TV games of Lakers-Bucks and Rockets-Clippers.
And we might actually get to see Kawhi Leonard and Paul George together in a primetime matchup.
Below, I’ll walk through injury news to note about this matchup, along with how sharps are betting the spread and total. I’ll update this post throughout the day as lines move as well.
Odds as of Thursday at 9:45 p.m. ET and via FanDuel, where Action Network users get a risk-free bet up to $500.
Updates
6:15 p.m. ET: With the majority of bettors on the Clippers spread, plus the steam move at 4:30 p.m. on Clippers -4.5, this line now sits at Clippers -5 consensus but -5.5 at FanDuel.
4:30 p.m. ET: Right after 2 p.m. ET, there was a steam move on the Rockets at +5, which pushed the spread back down to +4.5. About 10 minutes ago, bettors bought back the Clippers at -4.5, although the line has remained there so far.
Injury News & Analysis
- Houston Rockets: Nothing new.
- LA Clippers: JaMychal Green (tailbone) is questionable.
As of now, there isn't a lot of notable injury news looming over this game, like there is in Lakers-Bucks with Anthony Davis.
Green is the only notable player on the injury report, and he's questionable to miss his sixth straight game with a tailbone injury. The Clips have dealt with a variety of injuries over the past few weeks, including to Landry Shamet and Lou Williams, but both are back for tonight's tilt.
For alerts and more information on all injury news tonight, check out our new Labs NBA Insiders tool, which provides injury information on all players updated in real-time, probability for each to play, betting analysis and more.
Sharp Report & Line Movement
Below I'll show how to use the Sports Insights tools to analyze line movement and why the movement has occurred. For reference, here are a few phrases I'll use, if you aren't familiar with them:
- Steam move: Sudden, drastic and uniform line movement across the entire sports betting marketplace. Steam is the result of a sudden overload of money placed at multiple sportsbooks and, in most cases, occurs due to betting groups, betting syndicates and a few key players with the resources to "get down heavily” at multiple locations, all at once.
- Reverse line movement: Betting line movement that contradicts the public betting percentages
The spread opened at Clippers -5.5, but it has sat at -5 most of the time once the market fully opened with big limits. The only steam move we've tracked since then is on the Clips at -5, which moved the line back to -5.5 for a couple hours, but since it's moved back to consensus -5.
As of early Thursday afternoon, the public is on the Clippers, who are getting 60% of the spread bets. That said, just 48% of the spread money wagered is on L.A., which is likely why it moved back to -5.
There's been much more action on the over/under, with bettors pounding the over so far Thursday. We have tracked two steam moves on the over — at 233 and then again at 234.
A whopping 69% of bets are on the under, along with 63% of the money wagered, so it's certainly notable that the line has moved 2.5 points up from the opening number.
We'll see whether there's any buyback on the under after the significant movement. I'll update this post throughout the day.
Steam moves tracked: Clippers -5, Over 233, Over 234
