The Atlanta Hawks have reason to smile right now. The Indiana Pacers don’t. Can Atlanta embrace prosperity? Can Indiana turn around its season, which stands on shaky footing?
Indiana Pacers @ Atlanta Hawks – Wednesday, November 7
Why Indiana Will Win
No college football betting expert would deny the contention that the Indiana Pacers are struggling at the moment. They just got whacked in San Antonio by the Spurs. However, a lot of teams are going to experience that same fate over the course of this season. Don’t read any more into that loss than you need to – it’s a perilous and risky exercise. The thing to realize about this game is that Indiana is a resilient team. The Pacers finished eighth in the East in 2011 but climbed up to third in the East last season. Indiana has established a reputation for being undaunted in the face of long odds. The Pacers didn’t beat the Miami Heat last season in the playoffs, but they took a 2-1 lead in the series and had the Heat sweating bullets in the second half of Game 4.
When you go over your next sportsbook review, you will also see that Atlanta, a very up-and-down franchise for as long as anyone can remember, doesn’t sustain its moments of ascendance for very long. The Hawks are the kind of team that will flourish on one night and then plummet the next. It’s true that Atlanta beat Oklahoma City on the road this past Sunday, but it would be entirely in character for the Hawks to then stub their toes against Indiana. Hawks fans and residents of Atlanta who follow professional sports would be able to tell you as much.
Why Atlanta Will Win
When people pursue a sport betting play, they have to face facts and use information to their advantage. Online football betting gurus know how much they don’t know about basketball. If they were encouraged to make a betting play on this game, they would take the Hawks for an obvious reason: Indiana is still without its foremost scorer.
Pacer forward Danny Granger missed his team’s first four games this season, and team officials don’t yet know when he’ll be back on the court. Head coach Frank Vogel was unable to express a lot of confidence in the notion that Granger could make a speedy return to the hardwood.
“It’s a limiting type of pain,” Vogel told Curt Cavin of the Indianapolis Star in a story published this past Tuesday, Oct. 30. “He can run and jump and play, but he’s limping and a little gimpy. He lacks explosiveness.”
Granger has been Indiana’s leading scorer the past five seasons, averaging 18.7 points in the truncated yet compressed 2011-2012 campaign. He made a legitimate attempt to play in the team’s last two preseason games on the calendar, but he came up limping and had to shut himself down. The fact that Granger is still not ready to take the floor after two weeks of inactivity is an ominous sign for the Pacers.
Who Will Win?
It’s hard to expect too much from the Pacers as long as Granger is out of the lineup. Take Atlanta and don’t overthink the matter.
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NBA Betting Pick: Atlanta
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