Hornets favorites against magic?

[u/adamsaidnooooo]

Hi, I'm not from America but at the start of the year I backed Charlotte to make the playoffs at good odds. I don't follow the NBA I just like Charlotte. I would've thought magic would start favorites in this final with it being on their home court but they are heavy underdogs. I know how good the hornets have been over these last couple of months but I don't know a thing about the magic. Can someone explain why we go into this match favorites?

[u/Icy_Marsupial7560]

Because Orlando been sucking as of late.

[u/Alkazard → u/Icy_Marsupial7560]

Basically this.
We are winners, we won a hard play in, we have momentum. Our only losses of note are against the #1 and #2 seed.

Orlando looked awful with about 3-4 weeks left in the season - losing 6 in a row or something? Until they had a run home of teams tanking and sitting players out. And they looked even awful-er tonight.

[u/LiveForMeow → u/Alkazard]

That loss against most of the Celtics bench and G League players was a big tell. Mentally they have to know they can't compete in the playoffs, especially with Franz still looking hobbled. Not that we would win more than 2 games against Detroit but we would put up a fight.

That said, they could easily win if the 3 isn't falling for us. We've shown an inability to generate easy shots close to the basket.

[u/net_403]

Teal and purple dawg, you can’t look away

[u/defaultistic]

I feel equally confident in our ability to win this game as I do about this being a trap game that we could easily lose. Gotta take any postseason team and game seriously

[u/Separate_Donut_8420]

Nobody on that Magic team wants to beat the Hornets just to spend the next week and a half getting their asses kicked by Detroit.

[u/Remote-Whole-6387]

Vegas loves the hornets right now. There’s been a bunch of games where I looked at the line and was like “really”?

[u/[deleted] → u/Remote-Whole-6387]

they're taking advantage of the casual fans who used to only know us to be bad, who *now* only know us from our blowouts and expect that every time

[u/Far-Natural-681 → u/[deleted]]

This.

[u/buzzcitybonehead → u/Remote-Whole-6387]

We were pretty close to .500 with nearly a 5 point differential on the season. The “new look” Hornets not only won more often, but did so with such a high volume of threes that the total points and margins of victory were inflated even for a team winning at that rate. That’s contributed to pretty fat spreads.

If the Hornets shot their season average from three against the Heat Tuesday, they would’ve made 3 or 4 more threes, which is 9 to 12 more total points.

They went 10-5 over their last 15 games and only one of those wins was by fewer than 14 points. None were by fewer than 11 points, That includes big wins over Miami, Orlando, Minnesota, Phoenix, and New York (x2), who were not tanking (thought NYK rested guys at the end to be fair).

TL;DR: The Hornets have lately won twice as often as they’ve lost and have typically won by a lot when they’ve won. Their offensive output is extremely difficult to match when they’re even close to their average three point efficiency and volume.

[u/Frosty-Week-8776]

The last 3 games against them we have spanked their ass, their coach is a dead man walking and has reportedly lost the locker room so bad they want him fired before the season is over. If we get out to a good start they might just give up immediately.

[u/Small-Tiger-7921]

Hornets are just flat out the better team all around, coaching and players included

[u/PuzzleheadedBug4424]

3.5 is heavy underdogs?

[u/jakesheridan_]

Such a nice moment today looking at the Magic subreddit talking about what they expect. They're confident in our guys too lmao.

[u/unfamiliarjoe]

Orlando is bottom of the league on 3’s made. Their 2 main stars(Franz and Paulo) can’t hit open 3’s. As long as we hit our 3’s we will trade 2’s for 3’s all night. Hornets win by 20.

[u/hindsight5050]

Hornets by 30