Spurs-Wizards hold clinic on how not to defend paint in OT track meet

Usually when two teams combine for nearly 300 points in an NBA game, they make a decent amount of 3-pointers. That was not the case on Monday night when the San Antonio Spurs and Washington Wizards squared off in D.C. The Spurs eventually came away with a 146-143 victory in OT — yes it only went to one overtime.

Wizards All-Star Bradley Beal dropped a game-high 45 points on 20-of-37 shooting and missed all four of his 3-point attempts. DeMar DeRozan had 37 points and 10 assists for the Spurs and didn’t even sniff a 3-point shot. Dejounte Murray had 25 points and no treys. Russell Westbrook missed all three of his attempts from beyond the arc.

It was a display of outside shooting ineptitude while also being a clinic on how to not defend the paint in the NBA. Both teams shot 53 percent from the floor. The crazy thing is neither team turned the ball over much either; the Spurs had six and the Wizards had eight. So it wasn’t even a sloppy game. It was just nothing but pure offense. Which you love to see. Unless you’re from the ‘80s and ‘90s and want to see hard-nosed, smash mouth basketball (if that’s even a thing).

You just love to see a betting split get absolutely blown up as well. On DraftKings Sportsbook, the Over/Under was set at 228 just before game time. The under was getting 97 percent of the handle with the bets splits 50/50. The math was too much for me above, but it was close to 300 points by the two teams. That cleared 228 by a pretty wide margin. Even if the game hadn’t gone to overtime, the total was 289 and 23 points were scored in the extra frame, so 266 would have cleared the O/U easily anyway.

The other two splits were favorable for bettors. The Spurs ended up winning and over 65 percent of bets were on SA ML. The Wizards ended up just covering the 4-point spread at +4, which received 67 percent of the backing on DKSB.