Milwaukee Bucks – New York Knicks Odds & Prediction

Milwaukee Bucks – New York Knicks Odds & Prediction

BasketballGame Details

  • Milwaukee Bucks @ New York Knicks
  • NBA regular season
  • Date: 10/11/2021
  • Start time: 07:30 PM ET
  • Madison Square Garden, NYC

Championship hangover

The Milwaukee Bucks, champions of the 2020-21 season have been stumbling out of the gate to start the fresh season. This Bucks roster was a very thin squad to start with, but they ended up losing their best defender in P.J. Tucker in the offseason and didn’t make any real efforts to bring in any help. Besides the offseason not being kind to Milwaukee, injuries to key players also play a huge role in the team struggling.

The Bucks were without their second-best player Jrue Holiday for about two weeks, while starting SF Khris Middleton and Brook Lopez are still out. Middleton is out with a Covid infection and Lopez has a back injury, but neither of them is expected back for this game. Also unavailable is Donte DiVincenzo, a sharpshooter whose offensive output would be much needed.

Back-to-back games with a shortened rotation

Milwaukee BucksCoach Mike Budenholzer is known to use a relatively long rotation to lighten the load on his stars in the regular season, but that is something that he won’t be able to do Wednesday night. Milwaukee just played the 76ers in Philadelphia on Tuesday and all starters logged over 31 minutes. Giannis Antetokounmpo played 36 and Jrue Holiday, who freshly returned from injury played 31. This was Holiday’s highest minute count this season and he has yet to play in a back-to-back set so far this season.

With Milwaukee already being in a pretty rough spot due to the injuries and the travel from Philadelphia, we could also see either Holiday or Antetokounmpo missing this game, giving a lot of extra value to our pick.

Even if both of Milwaukee’s remaining healthy stars play, this team hasn’t been good this season.  The Bucks rank 19th in adjusted point differential this year while grading 19th offensively and 16th defensively. Milwaukee is also underperforming their closing spreads by 3.7-points on average. Books are simply giving too much credit to the champions.

New York in strong form

New York KnicksThe Knicks have already beaten Milwaukee 113-98 just a few days ago and we don’t see why they couldn’t repeat the same feat in this spot. New York grades third in points scored per possession in the league and seventh in effective field goal percentage. The Knicks are also in the top ten of the league in turnover rate and free throw rate, while grading 11th in offensive rebounding.

New York is also allowing the 6th lowest field goal percentage to opposing teams, which doesn’t bode well against a Bucks team that is struggling mightily on the offensive end and will be on tired legs for this game. The Madison Garden is one of the largest stages in modern sport, but it won’t matter if the road team is running out of gas.

Milwaukee Bucks – New York Knicks Odds


Pick: New York Knicks -3 –110 (1.91x) Bet365

We are laying the points with Knicks today! New York is fully healthy and rested trying to get another W of the defending champion. The Bucks are nowhere near their full potential and we would expect Milwaukee to fall short once again to the Knicks, who simply have much better depth at this point in the season.

Note: Only bet the Knicks at -3.5 –110 (1.91x). We wouldn’t bet this game once the spread moves to -4 or higher unless either Holiday or Antetokounmpo are announced out. If either of the stars sits the Knicks are playable at -6 or better.

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