NBA - 707 San Antonio Spurs @ 708 New Orleans Hornets
Projected Line: 183 points | San Antonio by 13 points
***DOUBLE DIME PLAY***
There is a new hype around New Orleans with the arrival of Anthony Davis. The team's future looks bright and in some web projections, I've seen people predicting the Hornets to have 40 wins this season. Well, those guys must be insane! New Orleans has too many black holes on their roster, especially on the SF position, besides the fact they have no depth on their backcourt and have an one-dimensional frontcourt, good on defense but poor on the offensive end, even though Anthony Davis might do some nice things once in a while.
During the preseason, it was evident what kind of a team will the Hornets be on this season: they will be a good rebounding team in both ends of the floor, something not surprising for a team with Anthony Davis on their roster. The Hornets were #1 on defensive rebounds during the preseason. However, the team is still struggling on the defensive rotations and their backcourt lacks lateral speed and strength with Greivis Vasquez and Austin Rivers.
New Orleans will still have to make some adjustments during the season and they have the problem of immediately facing San Antonio on their first game of the season, a team who is clearly one of the most well prepared teams in the league since the start of the season. San Antonio hasn't been a good offensive rebounding team over the last few seasons because that's not their current game strategy, so it won't matter a lot the fact that New Orleans will have a clear rebounding edge on their own basket. I'm waiting for Tony Parker to completely outplay Greivis Vasquez with his superior speed, while San Antonio will run multiple pick and rolls just to get on Robin Lopez's lack of foot speed. Manu Ginobili won't play tonight, so San Antonio won't be on a full force offensively, but we are still in front of a very well oiled machine with a lot of offensive solutions.
What I noticed the most in New Orleans during the preseason was their lack of offensive dynamic. For me, that wasn't a surprise, as they simply don't have talent on offense. Eric Gordon is likely to play tonight, but he isn't probably at 100% physically right now and he will have to deal with Kawhi Leonard defending him. In eight preseason games, the Hornets only reached the 20 assists mark twice and even though I know that was just the preseason, the Spurs had at least 22 assists in all their preseason games for example. The truth is that the Hornets have no offensive flow, while showing also some terrible movement on offense combined with poor decision making that led to turnovers and low-percentage shots.
With Robin Lopez and Anthony Lopez both lacking a good post up game, the Hornets are condemned in being a jump shooting team and the problem is that they aren't being effective, with the exception of Ryan Anderson, who still just shot 45-147 (30%) 3pts during the preseason! New Orleans committed a lot of turnovers, they were the 4th worst team in the preseason on this stat and like it has been an habit in teams coached by Monty Williams, the Hornets also don't have a good transition game, with the Knicks being the only team in the preseason that had less fast break points than them!
Gregg Popovich has already mentioned that he wants the Spurs to be a better defensive team than they were last season and the flaws of the Hornets' offense will be too evident on the early season, so I expect an easy win for San Antonio tonight, who won't have problems in shutting down the Hornets offense. Therefore, I'll be taking San Antonio tonight on a Double Dime Play and the Under on a Single Dime Play!
Pick: 3 units (Single Dime Play) on 707/708 Under 188 @ -110 / 1.91 on Bookmaker
Pick: 4 units (Double Dime Play) on 707 San Antonio Spurs (-6,5) @ -110 / 1.91 on 5Dimes
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