Posted at 10:00 AM EST. Odds are subject to change.

Phoenix +3½ -110 over Portland

9:00 PM EST. Portland struts into Phoenix tonight at 5-1, chest out, riding a four-game road win streak and doing it with a backcourt held together by nostalgia and athletic tape. Ja Morant is out with a hamstring until December. Shaedon Sharpe is out for months with a torn meniscus. What's left is Deni Avdija being asked to be the entire offence (24.2 points a night on a usage rate that should come with hazard pay), Jrue Holiday playing point guard like it's a pension plan, and Damian Lillard's homecoming tour. The Blazers just won in Denver on Monday, at altitude, and now they fly to the desert chasing a fifth straight road win and road streaks in this league don't die quietly, they die exactly like this, on the second stop of the trip against a home team that hasn't played in its own building in a week.

Phoenix knows exactly where to stick the knife, too, because Portland's defence is built around Donovan Clingan dropping to the free-throw line and daring you to shoot over the furniture. Most teams oblige with floaters and prayers. Devin Booker is not most teams. Booker (26.1 points, 6.0 assists a night) is the league's foremost midrange assassin, and Jalen Green next to him lives in the same neighbourhood — the pull-up elbow jumper is a layup drill for these two, and drop coverage turns it into target practice for 48 minutes. Add Dillon Brooks snarling at whoever Portland's hottest hand is, Miles Bridges running the floor, and Collin Gillespie's bench spark, and the Suns have scorers at every level of the floor that Clingan's scheme politely declines to guard.

And don't let the 1-4 fool you into thinking this team can't score in this building, their one win was a 131-point home eruption against Golden State, and on Monday they walked into San Francisco and built a 17-point lead on the Warriors before the wheels came off late. The offence works. The talent works. What the Suns need is home cooking, and tonight it arrives gift-wrapped: the start of a seven-game homestand, a wounded favourite on the second night of a road swing, and a total of 227.5 that promises a track meet where the last possession decides it. In a one-possession game, you take the home team, the better shot-makers, and the hook.

That's the whole bet: Portland's shiny record is a Morant-less mirage propped up by Avdija's heroics, and mirages are what the desert does best. Booker and Green carve up the drop, the home crowd smells blood from a team that finally gets to unpack its bags, and the Suns win the homestand opener outright  with 3½ in your pocket if it comes down to the final trip.

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