The Orlando Magic have been one of the pleasant surprises of the 2018-2019 NBA season. With three games remaining they’ve already improved by 14 wins over last year and have a shot to finish over .500 (39-40 at the moment). Most impressively, they’re trying to go from a 14th place finish in the Eastern Conference last year to making the playoffs this season. It hasn’t been easy and it’s going to be a battle until the very end to secure a postseason spot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Magic are one of five teams that are fighting for three playoff spots. Charlotte might already be out of contention as they’d need to have a lot of things go their way. From a practical standpoint, there are 4 teams at the bottom of the Eastern Conference playoff bracket competing for three spots. Adding to the drama is the fact that they’re only separated by a single game in the standings. Right now in playoff position are the 6th place Detroit Pistons with the 7th place Brooklyn Nets and the 8th place Magic both 1\/2 game back. On the outside looking in are the 9th place Miami Heat who are 1 game behind Detroit and 1\/2 game back of Orlando. The good news for the Magic is that they’re in the best form of the quartet having won 8 of 10. Detroit has lost 6 of 10, Brooklyn 7 of 10 while Miami has won 6 of 10. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Atlanta has been a very nice pointspread performer in the second half of the season and are 15-5 ATS in their last 20 games. They’re coming off a 130-122 home win over Philadelphia on Wednesday where they also got the money as a +4 home underdog. As impressed as we’ve been with the Hawks and their ATS surge much has been a function of scheduling–they’re a team that is easy to ‘look past’ and in recent games most of their opponents have been losing teams ‘phoning it in’ or playoff teams that are already locked into their seeding. They haven’t faced many teams that are still in ‘fight mode’ but Orlando is definitely one. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although the Hawks have been at their best as a road underdog we’re going to back the favorite in this matchup. Orlando has been red hot at the Amway Center since the first of the year going 12-1 SU\/10-3 ATS on their home court. Orlando can guarantee themselves a playoff spot if they win out and this is their final home game on the schedule. They’ll conclude the season playing Sunday at Boston and next Wednesday at Charlotte. Another edge to Orlando–they’ve become a very good defensive team this season currently checking in at #5 in scoring defense allowing 106.4 PPG. Atlanta? They have the worst scoring defense in the NBA giving up an average of 118.8 PPG. The Hawks have actually regressed defensively over the past month or so–in their last 10 games they’re allowing an average 120.4 PPG. In Atlanta’s last 21 games they’ve only held one opponent to under 111 points. Orlando has won and covered all three meetings with Atlanta this year with all three victories by double digits. In light of that, the NBA pointspread<\/a> of -8 on this game looks reasonable. The Magic take care of business at home on Friday night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n BET ORLANDO MAGIC -8 OVER ATLANTA HAWKS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Orlando Magic have been one of the pleasant surprises of the 2018-2019 NBA season. With three games remaining they’ve…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[134],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nba"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5315"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5315\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5318,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5315\/revisions\/5318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}