Hornets Lakers Betting – Two-Time Defending Champions Begin Push For Three
It’s that time of year again: The Los Angeles Lakers, champions of the NBA in 2009 and 2010, will go for a three-peat in 2011. The road to glory begins this weekend against New Orleans.
NBA Betting Overview: (7) New Orleans Hornets vs. (2) Los Angeles Lakers
Phil Jackson will coach his final NBA postseason. Kobe Bryant will chase his sixth NBA championship. The Los Angeles Lakers will try to win their 17th league title, tying the Boston Celtics for the most in all of (North American) professional basketball. There’s no shortage of storylines as the Lakers begin in earnest the push for crowning glory. If L.A. can indeed take home the hardware, it will be hard to deny the even more elevated place that Jackson, Bryant and the Lakers franchise will occupy in the annals of NBA history. Reputations are made and broken in these months of the postseason, and while the Lakers’ Hall of Fame coach and superstar player are already regarded as legends, they can burnish their credentials even more by getting the job done in 2011.
Pundits in the sports betting community will be focused on the Lakers, a center of betting activity that will eclipse MLB baseball betting developments in these spring months. The sports world will find it impossible to take its eyes off the Lake Show and its cast of compelling characters with well-delineated personalities. However, with all of that having been said, it’s hard to see how this specific series, an opening act against the New Orleans Hornets, is going to be the source of much drama or tension. If the Lakers get pushed in future rounds by Dallas, San Antonio, or Oklahoma City, no one would be stunned. It would raise some eyebrows, however, if the Hornets can extend the Lakers to six or seven games.
New Orleans has been surprising throughout this NBA campaign. First-year head coach Monty Williams has found a way to rejuvenate a team that completely missed the playoffs the previous season. Williams’s biggest breakthrough on the job in the Big Easy has been his evidently successful push to give star point guard Chris Paul a new injection of belief. Paul’s raw numbers have not gotten better in most statistical categories when compared to his most recent injury-free season in 2009, but that hasn’t kept the persistent Hornets from working their way back into the NBA conversation. The roster additions of Carl Landry, Trevor Ariza (a former Laker who helped the 2009 team win the Lakers’ first championship since 2002), and Emeka Okafor have been vital to the cause in the Crescent City. Unfortunately for New Orleans, the loss of an 18-point, 7- rebound, 50-percent shooter in the person of David West is a lot for a seventh-seeded underdog to absorb. It has to be said that the Lakers won all four regular-season meetings, three with West on the floor and one without his presence on the court.
How does New Orleans win this series? By watching Kobe and one of the Lakers’ big men get injured, that’s how. Take the Lakers in no more than five games. This will certainly be a short series rather than a long one.
Hornets Lakers Betting Pick: Lakers in five games
