What Are the Odds: Without Kevin Durant, Suns head to Los Angeles to take on the Lakers

Mar 22, 2023 - 4:00 PM

If you’re a Nets fan looking for a reason to be angry, tune into ESPN on Wednesday night for the doubleheader.

First, you have Kyrie Irving and the Mavericks hosting the Golden State Warriors in a very tense playoff-seeding matchup. Then, at 10:00 p.m. est you have Kevin Durant and the Suns headed to Los Angeles where they’ll look to keep the Lakers on the outside looking in for the final spot out West.

No, Durant won’t be suited up but you could play one hell of a drinking game with all the Durant-Nets-Kyrie mentions on Wednesday.

Fun times.

With that, though, let’s dig into the betting odds and turn this into one hell of a losing night for us, shall we?

DraftKing Odds

Suns vs. Lakers

Lakers +1 (ML -101)

O/U 227.5

Both the Lakers and the Suns are sitting just at around the .500 mark against the spread this season. The Suns at 35-33-3 and the Lakers at 34-35-3 thus far.

Los Angeles has been a tough defensive team over their last 10, posting a 110.8 DRtg during that span which makes them the 5th best in the NBA. Of course as you zoom in closer, with LeBron James out of the lineup, the defense gets a tad bit worse - but not all that much (8th; 113 DRtg).

Meanwhile, the Suns offense has struggled without its superstar Kevin Durant in the lineup. They are 26th in offense since Durant went down with his injury.

Still, this is one of those games where you see a bit of desperation from both teams to a point where you can almost see it getting out of hand; in a good way!

The Suns are slowly fading toward play-in territory having lost 4 of their last 5 games and the Lakers are 11th and on the outside looking in.

Both teams can put up threes in bunches and with the Lakers being without LeBron they have been more efficient (albeit slightly) from three.

Anthony Davis and Austin Reaves (yup!) have been putting up monster numbers and D’Angelo Russell and Malik Beasley have been the floor spacers the team has been looking for.

I know the Lakers defense has been very good of late but this feels like the kind of game that breaks the mold a bit and I am looking at the OVER here at 227.5.

As for who will win the game it’s hard to bet on the Suns right now without Durant. They haven’t found a rhythm at all. The Lakers have gone 9-5 in their last 14 games and I can really see them taking this one in desperation mode. So give me the Lakers at +1.

What do you think?

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