Andre Gomes Available Picks

May, 08 2008 9:30pm EST
TOTAL: Under 183 (-110)
LOSS for -4 unit(s)

New Orleans Hornets at San Antonio Spurs

Game 3 of this series and the Spurs are in a bad position right now. So bad that it's the first time in this century they reached the Game 3, after losing the first two games of the series on the road. But if they are teams and especially coaches capable to correct the problems from the previous games is surely Popovich. The Spurs lost the first two games of the series by huge margins: 19 points in the Game 1 and 18 points in the Game 2. The Hornets killed the Spurs in the 3rd quarter of both games, outscoring them by 29-17 and 36-18. So the question in here is why they did it and what can Popovich do to avoid that. I've found in my research some declarations which show what Pop will try to do, which is what I was expecting him to do today. "But again, the difference was in the third quarter. We can't allow them to score 36 points. Way too many for a team like us. We're not going to score 120 points in a game, so when a team scores like that in a quarter, it really hurts us." "I think (Monday) it was more that we got impatient," he said. "We stopped moving the ball. We had some great shots in the first half from moving the ball. The third quarter, (we had) turnovers and some quick shots. They got away with a couple of transition points and fast breaks, and that really is huge for them. Then they all get excited and play better. "Then we saw the game slipping away, sort of the same way as Game 1 in that third quarter, and we changed the way we played. We were not as patient. We took too many shots after one pass, and that's not who we are. They made us pay again." What the Spurs need to do today is try to improve their ball possessions and especially slow down the pace. In the first two games of this series, the Spurs committed a total of 28 turnovers, which resulted in 44 points for the Hornets, with their major part of them being dunks and layups. In the four defeats the Spurs had this season against the Hornets, in all of them New Orleans scored at least 100 points, which shows the need of the Spurs to slow down the pace when they face the Hornets. Especially now, as the Spurs are currently in a funk in offensive terms. In the two games of this series they have only shot 42.5% and 40.8% FG, scoring 84 and 82 points, but already in the series against the Suns, they have struggled in the offense in the last two games, only scoring 92 and 86 points, while shooting 39.3% and 39% FG. So the key for them is a better defensive performance today, in order to be capable to fight for the win. The line of this game is the same of the previous two games, which ended really close to the proposed total (186 and 183 points) and if it wasn't for the wild third quarters of the Hornets in these two games, both games would have ended with less than 180 points scored. Only for four times a team has been capable in this series of scoring more than 25 points in a quarter and I'm talking about 16 opportunities to do it. I expect that today the winner of this game will barely pass the barrier of the 90 points, in game which shouldn't have more than 175/178 points. Take the under in here.