Pure Lock #1: Nets at Magic — 3rd quarter Nets -2.5

Prior to Brooklyn’s last game against Chicago, Nets 3rd quarters looked like this:

10/29/21 Nets 27, Pacers 19.
10/31/21 Nets 32, Pistons 25.
11/03/21 Nets 34, Hawks 20.
11/05/21 Nets 39, Pistons 23.
11/07/21 Nets 35, Raptors 17.

The Bulls are also a very good 3rd quarter team and caught the Nets on the second night of a back-to-back.

The Magic, however, have been outscored 4 out of their last 5 third quarters.

Hopefully the Magic hang tough in the 1st half and won’t be trying to make up for too much lost ground. But either way, the Nets only giving up 2.5 points looks like great value here.

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Pure Lock #2: Raptors +3 at Celtics

Three points seems like a lot of points to give a Raptors team that is coming off a two-game losing streak, games to the Cavs and Nets in which they had second half leads that slipped away. If a few more open Raptors 3s had fallen, Toronto very well could have pulled out those wins and be riding a 6-game winning streak into Boston where the Celtics are 0-3 and without Jaylen Brown.

Toronto has a plethora of length to throw at Tatum, not to mention a tough and high-IQ defense to stifle him.

We also can’t ignore the coaching advantage on this one. We’ll take Nurse over Udoka all day.

Lastly, the Raptors already walloped the Celtics in Boston in the second game of the season by 32 points.

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Pure Lock #3: Hornets at Grizzlies Over 229

Still in a land of Unders, the high Total of 229 will probably scare a lot of people away, but it shouldn’t!

Defense: Hornets 28th. Grizzlies 30th.
Offense: Hornets 7th. Grizzlies 9th.

Two of the very worst defenses in the league + two top-10 offenses = take the Over!

Not to mention that if you are watching LaMelo and Ja, you want to be rooting for and celebrating buckets on buckets.

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As always, we will back tonight to recap these picks. There should hopefully be some sort of Blog Train action as well.

We love this game!