Miami Heat at Houston Rockets (no line yet) – 8 p.m. ET

With all the fanfare surrounding Shaq’s trade to Phoenix, it’s easy to forget that the Heat picked up a couple of quality players. Ironically, while Shaq will slow down the Suns' offense, Shawn Marion and Marcus Banks will bring speed back to Miami.

''It's a different offense for us,'' guard Dwyane Wade said of how they are utilizing the duo. "I'm not really saying we're becoming a Phoenix team, but we're becoming more up-tempo.''

Marion is an athletic forward power forward, while Banks is a point guard with blazing speed, and their arrival is slowly paying dividends. In last week’s game against the Nuggets, Miami broke a run of 20 consecutive games of scoring less than 100 points, but ultimately fell 114-133 in overtime.

''It's one of these things that it's taken on a life of its own,'' Heat coach Pat Riley said of the new offense. "We got two guys that have high energy, that have played in a system that's high-energy, and we also have some high-energy guys ourselves.

"But we also know that we don't have a real low-post game, so we're going to have to speed the game up.''

The Heat have dropped all three contests since the trade, extending their losing streak to a shocking nine straight games. They covered the spread just twice over that time.

The Rockets beat the Cavs 93-85 on Tuesday night for their ninth straight win, the longest active streak in the NBA. It’s also their best stretch since the 1998-99 season, and one more victory will make it the longest Rockets’ streak in 14 years.

Much like Tuesday night, a lot of their recent success comes down to strong defensive performances. Houston has held its last seven opponents to less than 90 points, one game shy of a franchise record for keeping opponents under the 90-point mark.

"I don't think we get as much hype about our defense as we did last year, but we think we're a pretty solid defensive team," forward Shane Battier told the Houston Chronicle on Wednesday. "When we clamp in and concentrate, we can do some really nice things on defense."

The Rockets are the fourth best defensive team in the league, holding opponents to just 92.6 points and a 43.6 percent field goal mark per game this season. Their strong defense has also helped them to cover the spread in six of their last seven games.

"What we're developing is a team like the Pistons," Tracy McGrady said after the win over Cleveland. "Great defensive team, going out there, playing together and not really relying on one or two people to score the rock. What we really care about is playing great defense and just playing together, and it showed."

Houston has won and covered the spread in two of its last three meetings with Miami. Interestingly, the underdog is 10-4 against the spread in the last 14 contests between these teams.

Miami came out on top the last time it faced Houston, winning 98-91 on Nov. 23 as a 3 ½-point underdog. That was one of only nine Heat wins this season.

Seattle had to do without the services of rookie sensation Kevin Durant in Tuesday night’s win over Memphis. The second overall draft choice missed the game with what team officials termed flu-like symptoms.

Durant featured in Friday night’s rookie-sophomore game at the All-Star weekend in New Orleans and went on to visit his former teammates at the University of Texas. He was back in Seattle for Tuesday’s practice, but felt ill during the shootaround.

He returned later that day for the game, but was immediately sent home. The 19-year-old, who is Seattle’s top scorer with 19.4 points per game, is expected to play against the Blazers on Thursday night.

Durant had missed only one of his previous 51 professional games before Tuesday. Last year, he played in all of Texas’ 35 games in his only college season, and was named national player of the year.

The Sonics come into Thursday’s game having won and covered in five of their previous eight games. Before that came a shocking 14-game losing streak which spanned almost the entire month of January.

Portland was once second in the league in 3-point shooting (38.6 percent), but one key injury has ended all that. James Jones missed the final four games before the All-Star break with a knee injury and the Blazers made just eight of 36 attempts (22 percent), dropping them to sixth in the league (37.9 percent) with the Pistons.

"James' ability to knock down the 3-point shot has proven to be one of the keys to our success here in the early going,"' Blazers general manager Kevin Pritchard told ESPN.com.

"Originally we felt holding him through the All-Star break would be enough, but after consulting with our medical staff we feel an additional few weeks of rest is the best course of action."

In fact, Jones could miss up to five weeks in total, with the same injury that forced him to miss 12 of Portland’s first 15 games. The forward was the second-leading 3-point shooter in the league before the injury (48.3 percent) and was also averaging 9.1 points and 2.9 rebounds per game.

Portland has lost all five games that James has missed and has covered the spread just once over that period.

Portland has won and covered in two straight meetings between the teams, both at home. Seattle won (both SU and ATS) in four of five games against the Blazers before that.

The last game between these teams was on Christmas Day of last year, and the Blazers were 89-79 winners as 7 ½-point favorites.