A nine-game NBA betting slate is capped off tonight with an interdivisional clash between the Charlotte Hornets and the Sacramento Kings.
While it's not the most marquee matchup in the Association, what better way to say goodbye to February then a battle between two of the league's most porous defenses?
NBA odds have opened with a sky-high total and the home Kings as a slight favorite, but check out our free NBA picks and predictions below to see which way we're leaning for this 10:00 p.m. ET tip off.
Charlotte Hornets at Sacramento Kings betting preview
Injuries
Hornets: Gordon Hayward F (Probable), Cody Zeller C (Questionable), Devonte' Graham G (Out), Caleb Martin F (Out).
Kings: Jabari Parker F (Out), Hassan Whiteside C (Out), Tyrese Haliburton G (Out).
Find our latest NBA injury reports.
Betting trend to know
The Over is 9-0 in the Hornets' last nine games as a road underdog. Find more NBA betting trends for Hornets vs. Kings.
NBA sharp money and line movement report
By Patrick EversonSacramento opened -2 Saturday night at FanDuel, dipped to -1 this morning, then made its way to -3 by midafternoon. As of 7 p.m. ET, the Kings remain 3-point favorites, but the Hornets are taking 69 percent of spread bets and 70 percent of spread money. The total opened at 238, rose to 239, fell to 235.5 midafternoon and rebounded to 237.5, with 55 percent of bets on the Under and 58 percent of money on the Over.
Check out the full line movement for this game
Against the spread (ATS) pick
The Sacramento Kings can finally exhale, as they snapped an ugly nine-game SU and ATS losing streak with Friday's win over Detroit. The Kings are currently the league's worst scoring defense, giving up 120.1 points per game, and they ramped it up by surrendered a whopping 126.3 points per contest during that losing stretch.
The primary defensive weakness for Sacramento? Giving up threes...and lots of them. During that skid it allowed opponents to hit 14.4 bombs per game on 42.5 percent shooting. Compare that to the Kings' last five wins (Friday and then a four-game stretch all the way back from February 1-7) they allowed their opponents to connect on just 33.3 percent of their deep shots.
That could be the difference tonight against a Hornets team that has fallen in love with threes recently. Charlotte is currently 10th in the league at 36.5 attempts per game but the Hornets were jacking up a ridiculous 40.5 deep shots per outing in February—and if you take away two games where they uncharacteristically took only 24 attempts, that goes up to 43.9 attempts in the other 10 games.
The Hornets are coming off a 130-121 loss to the Warriors and have now gone 4-4 SU and ATS over their last eight games, alternating wins and losses in the process. Sunday night is the fourth game in a six-game Western Conference road trip, but this might actually be beneficial: Charlotte travels to Sacramento from San Francisco (about 88 mi.), while the Kings are heading home from Detroit—a slightly longer 2,300-mile cross-country trek.
Playing at Golden 1 Center hasn't exactly been kind to the Kings either, as they are just 6-12 ATS at home this season and have failed to cover in five straight home games. Hornets leading scorer Gordon Hayward is probable tonight, as he's dealing with a hand injury, but even if he's not 100 percent, let's not forget that this is a Sacramento team that has been absolutely horrendous over the last three weeks – save for a victory over the second-worst team in the NBA – and is the favorite.
Give me the Hornets with the points, please and thank you.
PREDICTION: Charlotte +1 (-115)
Over/Under pick
If we're looking at Over/Under trends, everything points in one direction. The total has gone Over in each of Charlotte's last six road games and six of its last seven games overall, while Sacramento's 110-107 win over Detroit snapped an eight-game Over streak. Plus the Over has hit in seven of the last 10 head-to-head meetings.
If we want to use stats and/or the eye test...well it's the same damn story. As mentioned above, Sacramento gives up more than 120 points per game, and Charlotte yields the 10th-most points per game in the NBA as well. The two clubs have given up at least 120 points in 10 of their last 14 games combined and are 38-25-1 O/U this season.
What am I trying to say? Even with a high total, we're taking the Over.
PREDICTION: Over 239 (-110)
Player prop pick
We talked about how Sacramento has been letting opponents hit a lot of threes...and how Charlotte has been hoisting them with no regard for scoreboard operators' lives. That leads us to believe the Hornets will shoot – and make – plenty of threes tonight, so we're looking squarely at high-scoring guard Terry Rozier.
The feisty point guard is having a career year, averaging 20.6 points per game while shooting 7.6 triples per game and hitting 3.4 on 44.3-percent shooting—all career highs. He went 1 for 9 combined in back-to-back games against Utah and Phoenix, but they are the league's third and fourth-ranked scoring defenses. In his last seven games, excluding those outliers, he hit at least three treys in each and averaged 4.86 per game.
He's connecting from deep on the regular, with his only struggles coming against elite defenses. Seeing as the Kings are the polar opposite of an elite defense, we're banking on Rozier going over his 3-point total tonight.
PREDICTION: Terry Rozier Over 3.5 made threes (-125)
Hornets vs Kings betting card
- Charlotte +1 (-115)
- Over 239 (-110)
- Terry Rozier Over 3.5 made threes (-125)
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