NBA Betting Picks: New York Knicks at Cleveland Cavaliers

The New York Knicks have been the hottest team in the NBA over the past couple of months–or at least until last night when the Chicago Bulls ended the Knicks’ 13 game winning streak. New York will try to regain that momentum on Friday as they travel to Cleveland to take on the lowly Cavaliers. Cleveland hasn’t been playing badly over the past month–relatively speaking at least–and they’ve covered four of their last six games heading into this contest. In the ‘big picture’, however, this is a team going nowhere–they’ve lost 8 of 10 SU and are well off the pace of the playoff teams in the Eastern Conference. At the other end of the spectrum they’re solidly ahead of Orlando and Charlotte and since there’s really no way to improve their position in the final days of the season its likely they’re just ‘playing out the string’.

Looking at the situational data and historical series matchup there’s at least a few things to suggest that the Cavs might be competitive here. This is the third game of the year between New York and Cleveland and the Cavs have covered two of these games, winning one straight up. They’ve won and covered four of the last five meetings at home and are 19-13 ATS in the second half of the season. They’ll enter this game rested while the Knicks obviously are playing in the second of back to back games. The Knicks have been a solid pointspread play as well this season and have been a license to print money during their winning streak. Even with the loss last night they’ve covered 13 of their last 15 games.

With four games remaining and no chance of catching the defending NBA Champion Miami Heat atop the Eastern Conference standings the Knicks have a little more work to do before they can start looking ahead to the postseason. They’re currently two games ahead of Indiana for second place in the conference and they’ll definitely want to keep their current position. Furthermore, there’s always a danger of a loss of intensity after the end of a long winning streak and that would be disastrous at this point of the season. The Knicks are the drastically better team and we expect them to get back on the winning track with a win and cover here.

BET NEW YORK KNICKS -4′ OVER CLEVELAND CAVALIERS