Two short days ago, the Atlanta Hawks and Miami Heat set the game of basketball back 15 years.
No, make that 25 years. Heck, I’m 35 years old and I don’t remember seeing that level of offensive incompetence.
In this math-driven era, 184 points is legitimately difficult to comprehend. The sportsbooks are happy to write that performance off as the exception and not the norm, something that is evident with a 230-point projection tonight – I think that approach is right, but I do think DraftKings has mispriced a line in this rematch.
NBA Pick for February 26
Atlanta Hawks vs. Miami Heat Best Bet
When these teams squared off on Monday, Tyler Herro and Trae Young combined for 22 points. On Tuesday, the line is set at 53.5 points.
Hawks & heat a combined 15/42 pic.twitter.com/cSPGnfDxCs
— KJ 🏂 (@ElunHatesMe) February 25, 2025
At face value, that seems insane, but given their season averages and patterns, I get how that number comes to be – both of these stars average 24.0 points a night and are facing a below average defense.
Without Monday’s outlier game, this projection wouldn’t stick out to me or anyone else, but Monday happened and we get the luxury of reacting.
Herro and Young are both, at some level, jump shooters and with that path of scoring comes significant swings. I don’t care if you’re Kyle Soppe (don’t you dare leave me open straight on!) or Steph Curry (he was 15-of-46 from the field in three games to close January) – some days the jumpers don’t fall.
It happens.
The results from Monday are not why I’m interested in fading this duo. It’s the how.
This tandem got off just 33 shots in 73 minutes, which has me intrigued. The poor shooting thing I can overlook, but the limited volume indicates that these two poor defenses had a single goal in mind – to make anyone else beat them.
That plan isn’t always easy to execute, but bad defenses can overcommit to a strategy and that’s why I’m not betting the total for this game. Maybe Alec Burks gets hot or Zaccharie Risacher does his thing for 30 minutes and this point total takes off. That could happen, but I do expect both of these defenses to approach this game with a very similar game plan and that has me confident in this ticket.
On Monday, Young and Herro took 33 shots from the field and attempted just six free throws. You can regress their conversion rates all you want – if the shooting volume is anything close to that again tonight, we are leaving with more money than we started with.
Generally, this duo takes roughly half of their shots from three-point land. Here’s what it would require from them to combine for 54 points tonight if we pencil in the same 33 FGA and six FTA from the last meeting.
- 17 three-point attempts: 10 makes (30 points)
- 16 two-point attempts: 9 makes (18 points)
- 6 free throw attempts: 6 makes (6 points)
These defenses are bad, but asking two focal points to make 57% of their twos, 59% of their threes, and all of their free throws is difficult. Even if you up the shot volume, it would still take an outlier shooting performance to cost us.
- 22 three-point attempts: 8 makes (24 points)
- 22 two-point attempts: 10 makes (20 points)
- 12 free throws: 10 makes (10 points)
That’s a 33% rise in FGA and a 100% spike in FTA – we still need 37% shooting from three (season average: 35.3%), 41% shooting from the field (season average: 43.4%), and 84% from the line (season average: 85.9%) to beat us.
I’ll take my chances!
Pick: Trae Young and Tyler Herro to combine for under 53.5 points (-110, DraftKings
