NBA Free Premium Play 03/15: New Orleans Hornets @ Washington Wizards

New Orleans  at Washington

NBA - 801 New Orleans Hornets @ 802 Washington Wizards Projected Line: 192 points Washington is coming from a big win against Milwaukee and the main reason for that was John Wall, who was amazing on the team's last two games. The Wizards are shooting very well from behind the arc with 43.3% 3pts since the All Star break, but they are just shooting 32% FG from 16-23 feet during the same span! Their pick and rolls are also super improved due to John Wall's great form. They have 0.74 PPP for the season, but they have improved these numbers to 0.88 PPP since the All Star break and 0.98 PPP on their last 5 games! As I've mentioned before, their outside shooting has improved, so they are better on spot up shooting, while their post up game with Nene Hilario and Emeka Okafor is also quite effective. The only area where they aren't being very effective is on transitions, where they can't take advantage quite well of the high volume of transition plays that they generally have on their games. I have to say that matchup wise, Washington's offense has a good matchup on the Hornets's defense. New Orleans's transition defense is #29 in the league with 1.23 PPP and the most ridiculous is that they are regressing even more lately with 1.32 PPP on their last 5 games! John Wall will have a super speed edge over Greivis Vasquez and the Hornets's pick and roll ball handler defense hasn't been great this season by being #20 in the league, but it has become even worse since the All Star break with 1.00 PPP allowed, with 1.14 PPP allowed over their last five games! New Orleans has also the second worst 3pts defense in the league since the All Star break with 42% 3pts allowed. Washington will have an edge in everything that they generally do on their offense, so they are an amazing spot to have a big offensive game tonight. The main reason why the Hornets's transition defense has been so terrible is because they are fully focused in crashing the boards on offense. They have a ridiculously good offensive rebound rate of 31.2% since the All Star break and they basically send everybody to try to get the offensive boards, so when they are unable to get the offensive rebound, their opponent scores easy transition points against them. The Hornets's offense is mostly based on pick and rolls and they have been playing well in both pick and roll ball handlers and roll man plays. In fact, their problem hasn't been scoring. Due to John Wall's offensive explosion, he is forgetting about defense lately and with that, the Wizards are regressing a lot on their pick and roll defense. They used to be an elite team earlier on the season, but they are #13 in the league on this area for the season with 0.78 PPP allowed, while they are allowing 0.93 PPP on this kind of plays since the All Star break. Therefore, the Hornets have also a good offensive matchup in here to explore. The first game between these two teams this season was one of the contests with less points scored this season. The Hornets had Austin Rivers playing 34 minutes, while Washington used Jordan Crawford at the PG position and he shot 9-24 FG! Chris Singleton also started at the PF position and this game was really played at the time where coach Randy Wittman had no idea on what to do with the Wizards's rotations. Things are much different this time and on a game involving two lowly teams in mid-March, I don't really expect both teams to play good defense today, with both the Hornets and the Wizards taking advantage of that to have good offensive games. I expect this game to be a relatively high scoring game, therefore I'll be taking the Over in here. Pick: 3 units (Single Dime Play) on 801/802 Over 188 @ -110 / 1.91 on Bookmaker