For my second Lock It In challenge pick, I'm locking in the under for tonight's match-up between the Lakers and the Rockets; here's why.

ย Last night I took the over on the Raptors/Knicks, which turned out to be correct, and I reasoned that both teams would perform above their average metrics for team and opponent score. I found that yesterday's line was set almost exactly at the average opponent score for each team this season, so the operative question became whether the Knicks/Raptors would perform above (or below) their average in scoring. Tonight, I'm using that same method.

First let's establish what the baseline average is for both teams. So far this season, the Rockets have scored an average of 101.5 points and given up 109. The Lakers have scored an average of 112.5 points and given up 112. Tonight's line on DraftKings is currently set at 219. If we take the total opponent scores, which means the scores each team has given up, on average, this season, we get 221, which is remarkably close to the o/u line. So the question is, will either team give-up more (or less) points tonight than they have on average this season?



Well to answer that let's have a look at their defensive rating. The lower the defensive rating the less points the team are likely to give up. We can see that the defensive ratings for both teams has taken a nose dive in the last couple of games, which means each team has given up less points over those handful of recent games than they have in the beginning of the season. This implies that if this trend remains constant tonight both teams will give up less points tonight than they have, on average, this season. This leads me to believe we'll see the under on the o/u tonight since the o/u line tracks so close to the season average opponent score for both teams. Let's see what happens and if the trend continues.