NBA FREE Pick: 505 Charlotte Hornets @ 506 Miami Heat
Rating: 2 Units – Regular Play
Pick: 505 Charlotte Hornets (+8)
Price: -105 / 1.95 on Bookmaker
Write Up:
This will be the second game of these home-home series and in the first one, the Hornets were very competitive having very similar numbers across the board to the ones Miami got but Charlotte’s biggest problem was defending the 3pts line, something that their coach acknowledged afterwards:
“Tonight the other thing we did, which we normally don’t do, is we were flying by shooters, which led to a bunch of (open shots),” Clifford said. “Now, the way the league is now, for both teams, you end up in cover a lot, where somebody is going to get beat because there’s so much space out there. Particularly when they had (Kevin) Love on the floor. They are five-out, so there’s going to be possessions where it’s like scramble, right? “And we are actually good at it, or pretty good at it. But when you do it, you can’t fly by your guy. Some teams do it. Again, it crushes you, and we’ve been good at that all year. That’s one of the things where we are like top two or three in the league and we don’t do it. Tonight we did and they killed us. I bet there were four, five wide-open 3s just because one guy, instead of having the discipline to close to the chest, make him dribble the ball, (they) fly by.’
I expect the Hornets to come prepared to defend Miami’s offense better this time around. On the other hand, Miami’s defensive pick n roll numbers have been subpar the entire season and that was exposed by the Hornets in the first game. Rozier is currently on a great run as Charlotte’s primary ball handler and I believe the Hornets should have the ability to remain competitive in this matchup once again tonight.