Posted at 11:45 AM EST. Odds subject to change.

Pinnacle +8½ -110 BET365 +8 -105 Sportsinteraction +8½ -115 888Sport +8½ -117

Charlotte +8½ over Atlanta

Best Odds: -110 at Pinnacle

7:40 PM EST. Gonna be real honest, perhaps too honest - we barely know what to write here. We'll start it this way: there's no fucking way the Atlanta Hawks should ever be big chalk like this. Not now, not tomorrow, not any time this season. We don't care if the Hornets hired a group of 70+ year olds to play in their starting lineup, we would probably still bet on the away team in this scenario.

First and foremost, the Hawks have been the worst ATS team in the NBA all season (23-46, 33.3%). That doesn't change at home (11-22, also 33.3%). Now at face value, you might be saying to yourself: but the Hawks are technically a play-in team as of today (aka the 10th seed, how impressive), and they still have 13 more wins than the Hornets. Sure, those things are true. Charlotte hasn't been impressive this season. They've incurred terrible injuries all year and as a team, they're still missing a few crucial pieces before anyone can take them seriously.

But what do we hear all the time from seasoned sports bettors? It's all about the number, and the Hawks do not qualify as this much of a favorite, no matter what the conditions. Full season these two teams have very similar defenses, both rated in the bottom rungs of the NBA, but we can't look at full season numbers and trust anything that it says about offense.

Atlanta was, at one point, a high-scoring offense that played very little defense but managed to win about 50% of their games. Since Trae Young went down to injury, the Hawks are now slower, less efficient, and they certainly don't put up the same numbers. In March, there's no disputing who the better defense is. Charlotte was a top 5 unit for a stretch after the All Star break, a roster transformed after Grant Williams, Seth Curry, and Tre Mann were traded to the bright blue team. Teams have figured them out a little bit, but they're still a respectable 16th overall, which is considerably better than the 24th ranked defense of Atlanta. The Hornets also held their last 10 opponents to just 108.4 ppg. Many losses came, but that's still impressive.

The Hawks' offense is now mid-tier, but in two previous affairs against the Hornets it didn't matter how good their offense was: Charlotte held their foe to 110 and 99 points in two wins against the Hawks this season, a testament to their capability on that end of the floor. And the last game was a 122-99 annihilation of Atlanta when they still had Trae Young. 

Putting it simply and perhaps for the 10th time in this article alone but just saying it in a different way, there is simply no world where the Atlanta Hawks should be damn-near a double-digit favorite against any NBA program. We'll end this piece now and just leave it at that.

Farley

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