Andre Gomes
NBA - 515 New Orleans Hornets @ 516 Houston Rockets
These two teams have been constantly underperfoming the public’s expectations and that’s why we have such a low line in here. The Hornets are 5-0 Under on their last 5 games and the Rockets are 3-1 Under on their last 4 games. Both teams are coming from low scoring games last night, however that doesn’t mean this game will need to be a low scoring affair. Actually I think it’s going to be the opposite of that. The Rockets lost against the Spurs by 75-77 in a game which went exactly as I thought it would (I took Spurs +6). The Spurs tried to slow down the pace of the game as much as they could, get the game closer and then at a ballgame, any team could win and that’s how San Antonio won last night. Weirdly, the Rockets showed little aggressiveness last night, having just 11 FT attempts and half of the offensive boards the Spurs had (5 vs 10). We can say the Spurs wanted to win the game more than the Rockets and naturally I expect a bounce back from the Rockets today, with them coming to this game more aggressive and getting a lot more FT attempts.
On the other side, the Hornets are coming from a close win against the Blazers, in a game where for the first time this season Chris Paul had less than 20 points and 10 assists. The team was affected from their loss against the Lakers on their previous game and the important for them was just to win the game. Today the matchups against the Rockets favor the game to have a good number of points. I remember PG Rafer Alston is out for this game, so Aaron Brooks will start on his place. Brooks is talented guard, with an offensive mind, but against Chris Paul, he will struggle on… defense! CP3 had a bad performance last night and he will want to bounce back in here. On the other side, Tmac shot just 2-12 FG last night, in another poor performance from him. However, today the perspective of him shooting better are good, as he will face Morris Peterson and Peja Stajokovic, who are poor defenders. And even Yao Ming uses to have good performances against the Hornets and last season, in two games against the Hornets, he scored 28 and 30 points.
We are in front of a game with a totals line of 181 points, but with both teams ready to explode offensively. The Rockets will come fired up for today, with another level of aggressiveness and the Hornets have been averaging 101.6 ppg on the road. It will be enough for both teams to score a little bit more 90 points tonight for this game to go over the total posted. Take the over in here.
Pick: 3 units (Regular Play) on 515/516 Over 181 @1.91 on Bookmaker