Not a lot of people had the Hornets starting the season winning 3 of their first 4 games on their bingo card, especially not with the likes of Coby White and Kon Knueppel out injured. Brandon Miller and Naz Reid have carried most of the scoring load on offense, with Dennis Schroder handling things at the point guard position. Miller’s back-to-back 30+ point performances in the wins over Miami and Washington are particularly encouraging, I quite like his match-up against the Pistons front line here which is handicapped by the absence of Jalen Duren. Miller is averaging 23.4 ppg in the last 5 meetings, he even had a massive 38 point performance against this team during that stretch.
Detroit suffered a loss last night at Madison Square Garden, despite jumping out to a 38-25 lead after the first quarter. After that impressive start they just fell apart and scored a combined 25 points in the following two quarters, allowing the Knicks to go up by as much as 27 points at one stage of the game. The three-ball just wasn’t falling, but the absence of Duren on the inside was also noticeable as Karl-Anthony Towns bullied the Pistons en route to 20 rebounds and 8 of them coming on the offensive end. Playing without their starting center on a 2nd night of a back-to-back could prove to be difficult here, the Pistons were only 8-6 ATS in this scenario last season.
The Pistons have won 5 in a row against Charlotte, by an average margin of 12.8 points per victory. Having had one more day of rest here and a bit of momentum with back-to-back wins, I feel like this is Charlotte’s best chance in a while of turning this trend around. I’ll take them to cover as road underdogs in this one.
Hornets vs Pistons Predictions: Hornets +6.5 is available at time of publishing. Playable at that number.
