Projected line: 173 points
We have all seen how Boston had a bad strategy yesterday at Miami by allowing the game to be completely wild open. As they were competitive in the last quarter, their best three players (besides Pierce who is out injured) logged major minutes yesterday: KG played 33min, Rondo 44min and Ray 40min! Even 6th man Bass played 32min! The team lost, but as bonus for their effort, they get to play tonight at back to back game at New Orleans! Certainly Doc Rivers will tell his players to slow down the pace, so Boston can still have some energy late in the game. But that won't even be necessary because the Hornets are already a slow paced team. The question of effort is also important, as last year Boston went 10-4 Under on back to back road games and 4-0 Under after an over!
On the other side, the Hornets are coming from a nice road win at Phoenix, where the key for their win was to adopt a slow pace and beat the Suns via their defense. This tells me that even without CP3, head coach Monty Williams will continue to be faithful to his system (Monty made defense a priority in the final two minutes, substituting Okafor in for Kaman, which resulted in stops on the final three Phoenix posessions!) and with this, I anticipate that tonight's game will be a pure half-court game.
As a note, last year's games between these two teams ended with paces of 79 and 85! Against Phoenix, the perimeter game of the Suns was well defended, as they shot 7-20 from 16-23 feet and 5-25 from the 3pts line! The Hornets did very well on their offensive interior game by shooting 12-17 FG at the rim and 7-16 FG from 3-9 feet, but without Gortat who played just 21 minutes, everything was much easier to them! Today Boston will be a much tougher opponent as the Celtics has the tools to stop the Hornets offense who is a bit stagnant without CP3, but they won't be able to jump on the Hornets underrated defense! So, my projections gave me a line of 172 points and so, I see value on the under in here.
Pick: 3 units (Single Dime Play) on 709/710 Under 176 @ -110 / 1.91 on 5 Dimes
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