NBA - 511 Los Angeles Lakers @ 512 New Orleans Hornets
Projected Line: 194 points
This is a tough spot for the Lakers, who will be playing their third game in four games, while being also on a back to back spot. The Hornets' offense is built around pick and roll ball handler plays and spot ups, but they will find a tough opponents in the Lakers' defense tonight. This is why Houston had 5-14 FG on pick and roll ball handler plays last night against the Lakers and 3-23 FG on spot ups! The Hornets are just #26 on overall offense, while being #25 in pick and roll ball handler plays with 10% volume, #28 on spot ups and #23 on transition plays. They have some games where they are unstoppable on the outside shooting, but they can also be absolutely terrible from the perimeter shooting in other games. Robin Lopez is coming from a big game against Milwaukee, but he will be defended by Dwight Howard today. Assuming that the Hornets will have problems in scoring down low tonight, they will need monster games from Ryan Anderson and Greivis Vasquez and that's unlikely to happen tonight, as the Lakers are still a top 10 team in defensive rating, even though under Mike D'Antoni's leadership.
New Orleans is a terrible team in perimeter defense, but that's because they prefer to protect the paint and force their opponents to shoot from the outside. This is why they got crushed by the Knicks' great perimeter shooting, for example. But that won't be the case with the Lakers' offense, as not only they have tired legs right now, as they haven't great 3pts shooters, barring Jordan Meeks. If we are expecting veterans like Kobe Bryant, Metta World Peace and Antawn Jamison to have monster games on such a poor spot, good luck with that.
The Hornets are known for their extremely slow pace and the truth is that the fastest pace they had on their last eight games was 87.86 against Denver! They won't try to run with the Lakers for sure and with the LA team in such a tough spot, I actually believe this game will be a relatively slow paced game. With the Hornets having a tough offensive matchup tonight and with the Lakers lacking fresh legs and good outside shooting to pound the Hornets' defense, I expect this game to be a low scoring one and therefore, I'll be taking the Under in here.
Pick: 3 units (Single Dime Play) on 511/512 Under 197 @ -110 / 1.91 on 5Dimes
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