Los Angeles Lakers vs New Orleans Pelicans betting tips and predictions for Friday’s NBA TV game. It’s a crucial game for the play-in tournament out West as the Los Angeles Lakers host the New Orleans Pelicans tonight at Crypto.com Arena. Read on for all our free predictions and betting tips.
Los Angeles Lakers
The most important news Lakers fans are keeping an eye on ahead of tonight’s game is the health status of LeBron James. He missed the last 2 games after tweaking his ankle in the loss at New Orleans about a week ago and he’s been upgraded to probable for tonight’s game.
With Anthony Davis already preparing a comeback tonight vs his former team, getting LeBron back would give the Lakers another dimension on both ends of the floor. Winning tonight could be crucial for LA as they’ve already lost twice to the Pelicans this season and they are 2 games behind them in the standings.
Lakers have had some really good performances vs New Orleans lately, they are 7-3 SU in the last 10 meetings and have beaten them in 5 of the last 6 played in Los Angeles.
New Orleans Pelicans
New Orleans has gotten hot just at the right time with 5 wins in their last 7 games overall which has put them in a solid position to end the season in one of the play-in tournament spots. With 6 games left they are 2 games up on the Lakers and Spurs in 9th place, so if the season ended today they would host the play-in game vs one of those 2 teams.
Just like the Lakers, they too are hoping to get their best player Zion Williamson back from injury, he hasn’t played a single game this season, but his foot recovery has been going according to plan lately so we might see him back at some point.
This team is 8-4 SU in their last 12 vs Western Conference opponents, but against the Lakers they’ve won just 3 of their last 11 meetings, so that’s something to be concerned about. In the game played last weekend it was Brandon Ingram with 26 points that led the way, they’ll need a similar effort from him tonight if they want to get the upset win here.
This is a do or die scenario for the Lakers. A loss here would put a huge dent in their hopes of reaching the playoffs, but with the likes of AD and LeBron coming back I really like their chances. Let’s back them to end their 4-game losing streak here.
Los Angeles Lakers vs New Orleans Pelicans Predictions & Odds
The projected total of 234 points sounds a bit too much for my taste here as neither of the 2 meetings played so far this season came even close to that number. With so much at stake, I’m expecting both teams to slow things down and calculate a bit more than usual, especially on the offensive end. If we look at the last 10 meetings, 6 of them have finished under the total and an average of 225.1 points per game was scored during that stretch.
The Pelicans have trended towards the under on the road quite a lot this season, their last 4 of 5 games have cashed on that bet while their numbers for the season are 13-24 on the O/U away from home. The Lakers always tighten things up towards the end of the season, last year their last 4 of 6 games played in April finished under the total, I could definitely see a similar scenario tonight as Davis will be anchoring their defence here. With the 3 most recent meetings all finishing under, I think that bet lands tonight as well.
