Cleveland at Charlotte
Time: 7 PM (CT), ESPN
Spread: CLE -1.5
Total: 217
Odds c/o 5dimes
The Charlotte Hornets sit at 5-7 on the season, as losers of its past four contests. Charlotte will host the Cleveland Cavaliers in the first game of a Wednesday night ESPN double-header. The Cavaliers are 1.5-point favorites in the game, with an over/under set at 217 points according to NBA oddsmakers at bookmaker 5dimes.
HORNETS
Charlotte has lost to the San Antonio Spurs, Minnesota Timberwolves, New York Knicks, and Boston Celtics after starting the season 5-3. The most recent defeat was a 90-87 stumble to the Celtics, a team that has won 13-straight now. Kemba Walker scored a game high 20 points, but he was just 5 of 19 from the field, and Charlotte shot just 38.8 percent as a team, while going 6 of 22 from three-point range. The Hornets were also out-rebounded 49-47 while committing 14 turnovers in the game. Charlotte has given up 108 points or more in three of those last four losses, too, showing some serious defensive deficiencies that were not there in the team’s (relatively) hot start to the season.
Even so, the Hornets have been pleased with a couple of its newcomers. Dwight Howard is averaging 14 points and 13 rebounds per game, while rookie Malik Monk has been a valuable reserve, averaging 9.6 points per game and 2.2 assists. Perhaps the most pleasant surprise has been Jeremy Lamb, who has stepped up as a viable second option for Steve Clifford. Lamb is averaging 16.7 points, 5.1 rebounds and 3.2 assists per game while posting the team’s second-best PER of 17.7. The absence of Nicolas Batum has hurt Charlotte, though.
As their secondary playmaker, he is vital: He has led Charlotte in assisted buckets to Walker the past two seasons, and without his influence in the offense, Charlotte has staggered to 103 points per game. Batum will return to the starting lineup tonight, and that could be the beginning of Charlotte righting this ship which has gone so astray the last handful of games. Batum averaged 15.1 points, 5.9 assists and 6.2 rebounds per game last season, and his offense is needed. Lamb will remain a valuable contributor, but Batum is a more experienced and better playmaker, perhaps even the key to unleashing Walker as we have noted in the past.
CAVS
Cleveland has lost its past two games and lost six of its past 10, despite having the league’s most dynamic talent in one LeBron James. James has been sensational, but he is not getting enough help from his teammates. Despite Kevin Love and Derrick Rose combining to provide 32.8 points per game, outside of that pair the Cavs have struggled.
Cleveland still manages 109.8 points per game, but its defense is surrendering 112.5—which is the recipe for a losing season, quite obviously. The defensive struggles may have been the biggest surprise, given that it is usually a penchant for LeBron’s teams to defend well and play hard on both ends. One must wonder if too much time is being ceded to a declining Dwyane Wade, who has hardly defended well for his part. Nor has he been much on offense.
Wade’s decline has come precipitously, and while the Cavaliers certainly snagged him on a buddy-buddy discount, it does not make the eight points per game any more palatable. Rose has shined and begun to look more like pre-injury Rose, but there is no sense extending the charade that the Cavaliers are going to get what he once was as a Chicago Bull, anytime soon, or ever. Beyond the big names, Jeff Green has been solid, but this team is looking a lot more like a middle-of-the-pack Eastern Conference team than the three-time Eastern Conference champs it has been.
What is so strange is that so little of the blame can be directed to its team leader, which instead begs the question of what head coach Tyronn Lue can do to get more from his defense. For starters, the Cavaliers have no rim protectors, and that only exacerbates the issue with Wade and Rose being so easy to beat on the perimeter.
While Timofey Mozgov may have been an expensive blunder, he is better than anything the Cavs currently have to guard the rim.
Center Tristan Thompson has only been the latest casualty to the Kardashian circus, and his career looms in the balance as he has only appeared in eight of the 13 games at 21 minutes a night—producing four points and six rebounds per game. Without Thompson emerging as a legitimate center, it casts a cloud over the entire Cavs’ defense, which again takes us back to the question: Short of a trade, to acquire a center, how can Cleveland begin to right this ship?
