{"id":12895,"date":"2011-01-29T15:28:09","date_gmt":"2011-01-29T20:28:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/?p=12895"},"modified":"2011-01-29T15:28:09","modified_gmt":"2011-01-29T20:28:09","slug":"arco-arena-showdown-new-orleans-hornets-at-sacramento-kings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/arco-arena-showdown-new-orleans-hornets-at-sacramento-kings-12895\/","title":{"rendered":"Arco Arena Showdown: New Orleans Hornets at Sacramento Kings"},"content":{"rendered":"

New Orleans Hornets AT Sacramento Kings
\nJanuary 29, 2011 at 10:00 PM EST
\nOpening Line:\u00a0 New Orleans -6
\nCurrent Line:\u00a0 New Orleans -4.5
\nOpening Total: 186.5
\nCurrent Total: 187.5
\nOpening Moneyline:\u00a0 NO -205 \/ Sac +175
\nCurrent Moneyline:\u00a0 NO -215 \/ Sac +175<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"
Chris Paul is leading the red hot Hornets, who have won 10 straight<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

New Orleans comes into tonight’s game as the hottest team in the NBA, winners of their last 10 games.\u00a0 They started off the season in such fashion, then hit a rough stretch, but appear to have rediscovered their stride of late.\u00a0 The winning streak represents the longest of the franchise’s history, but Chris Paul isn’t necessarily content with things yet.\u00a0 \u201cWe\u2019re still a work in progress,\u201d said Chris Paul following a victory over Golden State. \u201cTonight we were aggressive on the defensive end from the jump ball and able to set the tone.\u201d<\/p>\n

New Orleans coach Monty Williams echoed Paul’s sentiments, \u201cWe\u2019re not going to nitpick, but it\u2019s one of those things where we don\u2019t want to lose our rhythm because we think we\u2019re better than we are.\u00a0 We\u2019re winning games because we play a certain way. And when we don\u2019t, it doesn\u2019t look good.<\/p>\n

Sacramento hasn’t been playing exactly bad Sacramento ball, either.\u00a0 They shocked the Lakers by 10 points on Friday night, led by rookie DeMarcus Cousins who had a monster game against one of the best frontlines, if not the best, in the NBA.\u00a0 He recorded 27 points and 10 rebounds and forward Omri Casspi chipped in 20 points of his own.\u00a0 It’s a positive step for the Kings who have struggled to find any sense of consistency this year.<\/p>\n

Some betting trends:<\/p>\n

The total has gone UNDER in 5 of New Orelans’ last 7 games and they are 5-0 SU in their last 5 games and 5-0 SU in their last 5 road games.\u00a0 The total has gone UNDER in 17 of their last 23 road games and they are 7-1 SU in their last 8 against the Kings.\u00a0 They are 0-5 ATS in their last 5 against Sacramento and the total has gone OVER in 6 of their last 8 against the Kings.\u00a0 They are 4-14 SU in their last 18 road games against the Kings and 0-5 ATS in their last 5 road games against Sacramento.<\/p>\n

Sacramento is 6-18 SU in their last 24 games and 5-17 SU in their last 22 at home.\u00a0 They are 3-7-1 ATS in their last 11 at home.\u00a0 The total has gone UNDER in 4 of their last 5 against New Orleans and they are 1-7 SU in their last 8 against the Hornets.\u00a0 They are also 14-4 SU in their last 18 against New Orleans and the total has gone OVER in 6 of their last 8 home games against the Hornets.<\/p>\n

Key Matchups:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Chris Paul vs. Beno Udrih<\/strong><\/p>\n

Udrih is one of the more underrated point guards in the NBA, but I still don’t think he is the kind of player you would want starting on a championship caliber NBA team.\u00a0 Tyreke Evans relieves him of a lot of the playmaking duties as a combo guard, but Udirh does offer excellent outside shooting and he plays hard.\u00a0 Unfortunately for Udrih, it takes more than hard play to slow someone like Chris Paul down, who is now entering discussions for the league’s MVP award.\u00a0 Paul started a little slower than he had in years’ past, but has since found his rhythm and strung together a good stretch of games during the 10 game winning streak.\u00a0 He suffered a knee injury last year, but there appear to be no lingering effects as he is as quick and lithe as ever.\u00a0 He’ll pretty much have his way with Udrih tonight and it’s possible Evans switches onto Paul at some point during the game.
\n
\nEmeka Okafor vs. DeMarcus Cousins<\/strong><\/p>\n

Cousins went head first into the NBA game and the result was a lot of turnovers and poor shots, but that was early on.\u00a0 Evidenced by his huge 27 point game against the Lakers, he has begun to grasp the concepts that are required to be an effective NBA player.\u00a0 Okafor is a bit undersized as he is truly about 6’6 or 6’7 against the 6’11” Cousins, but Okafor find a way to stick with taller players so he could slow Cousins down tonight, but probably won’t be able to shut him down per se.\u00a0 Okafor won’t offer much resistance on the offensive end, which will allow Cousins to save his energy for the offensive end of the game, and that could spell trouble for the Hornets.<\/p>\n

Tonight’s game is probably going to be a pretty close one, despite the Hornets’ stellar play of late.\u00a0 The Kings do have talent; it’s just a matter of getting a level of consistency and being able to play hard for 48 minutes and hold onto leads when they get them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New Orleans Hornets AT Sacramento Kings January 29, 2011 at 10:00 PM EST Opening Line:\u00a0 New Orleans -6 Current Line:\u00a0 New Orleans -4.5 Opening Total: 186.5 Current Total: 187.5 Opening Moneyline:\u00a0 NO -205 \/ Sac +175 Current Moneyline:\u00a0 NO -215 \/ Sac +175 New Orleans comes into tonight’s game as the hottest team in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40250,"featured_media":5560,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1444,133],"tags":[837,1912,3594,836,582,53],"class_list":["post-12895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines","category-nba-handicapping","tag-chris-paul","tag-demarcus-cousins","tag-emeka-okafor","tag-new-orleans-hornets","tag-sacramento-kings","tag-tyreke-evans"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40250"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12895"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12895\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12897,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12895\/revisions\/12897"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}