NBA Betting Odds: New Orleans Hornets at Sacramento Kings

Added on Nov 21, 2010 by Jack Thurman in

NBA

The top and bottom of the Western Conference food chain face off at Arco Arena as the New Orleans Hornets head to California’s capital to play the Sacramento Kings. New Orleans is 1/2 game out of first place in the West with a 10-1 record. Sacramento is miraculously in 11th place despite a 4-7 record though they’ve been absolutely horrible.

New Orleans Hornets at Sacramento Kings
November 21, 2010 3:05 PM Pacific

Over the longterm being a contrarian will serve you well in the sports betting arena. Part of going against the public is finding ugly teams that no one including their mothers would bet and playing them. In theory, this produces line value and in the big picture that’ll make you money. Having said that–and as a longtime contrarian who loves to take positions against the public–taking ‘ugly’ sides is one thing, taking stupid sides is quite another. To paraphrase David St. Hubbins in the classic film ‘This Is Spinal Tap’ “There’s a fine line between stupid and clever.”

Another valuable concept for successful sports handicapping is not to overreact to short term performance trends. So Sacramento is no longer winless ATS at home? Big deal–they beat New Jersey and covered the spread by two points. Truth be told, we’re not really sold on New Orleans but you can’t argue with what they’ve done so far this season. They’ve lost only 1 game and are tied for #3 in scoring defense and have the #5 points for/against differential at 7.3 per game. Sacramento is the #23 scoring defense in the league with a -4.6 differential. Kings are also #23 in FG % shooting 44% per game which could be a real problem against the #1 FG % defense in the league.

The schedule even sets up well for the Hornets–they’ve got a back to back situation today and tomorrow but its against the Kings and Clippers. They’ll then have two days until the first tough game on this road trip at Utah and two more games until it concludes at the Rose Garden in Portland. We’ve never been huge fans of Chris Paul but New Orleans is winning with nasty team defense and as long as they keep that up they’ll keep winning. And we’ll gladly take a solid defensive team against a Sacramento team that struggles to beat even bottom feeders on their home floor.

Bet New Orleans Hornets -5′ over Sacramento Kings