Milwaukee Bucks Try To Sweep Pistons

Blake Griffin is no Willis Reed. He came back to start in Game 3 and instead of leading his team to victory he ‘led’ them to a 16 point defeat and a 3-0 deficit in their best of seven series with the Milwaukee Bucks. To be fair, Griffin played fairly well in his 31 minutes of action with 27 points, 7 rebounds and six assists. The reality is that the Pistons are completely outmatched in this series and it’s doubtful that anything will happen in Game 4 to change that.

First, some realities of being down 0-3 in the NBA. Every sports fan knows that no NBA team has ever come back from a 0-3 deficit in a best of 7 series. It has happened in other sports. There have been a total of 358 series in Major League Baseball, the National Hockey League and the National Basketball Association where one team fell into a 3 game hole. Their record in those series is 5-353 meaning that they come back to win 1.4% of the time. It has happened once in baseball, four times in hockey and never in the NBA. Is there any reason to think that the Pistons are going to be the team to break this dubious record against the best regular season team in the NBA that has completely dominated them in the first three games? I sure don’t think so.

So what about Game 4? How often do NBA teams complete the sweep when they’re up 3-0 in a best of seven series? Teams in this situation are 81-51 in Game 4 overall (61.4%) and 66-46 (58.9%) when that game is played on the road. So irrespective of the individual matchup, the team up 3-0 closes out the series nearly 60% of the time when Game 4 is on the opponent’s home court. Detroit has now played Milwaukee a total of 7 times since the start of the regular season. They’ve been competitive in only one game. They didn’t win that game but they did lose by only three points at home on 12/17/18. The didn’t even cover the NBA pointspread in that game–it landed right on the number for a push. All told, the Bucks are now 7-0 SU/6-0-1 ATS against the Pistons this year.

Game Three did feature the Pistons’ best offensive and defensive shooting percentages of the series. The bad news? They shot 38.5% from the field and ‘limited’ Milwaukee to 48.8% shooting. Game 1 was a 35 point Bucks win, Game Two was a 21 points Bucks win and Game Three was a 16 points Bucks win. The Pistons are now on a 2-7 SU/1-8 ATS run dating back to the end of the regular season. Their only win/cover came against the New York Knicks at Madison Square Garden on the final night of the regular season. That win allowed them to back into the playoffs despite the fact that Charlotte had been playing much better basketball down the stretch.

So is there a case to be made for the Pistons in this game? As tough as it is to lay a big price on the road in the NBA I sure can’t think of one. Milwaukee is a vastly superior team and so far in this series has played extremely focused basketball. Not sure that Detroit has the ability to change that now.

BET MILWAUKEE BUCKS -12 OVER DETROIT PISTONS

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