Hornets vs Bucks Picks, Prediction Today | Tuesday, Feb. 27

Here's everything you need to know about Hornets vs. Bucks on Tuesday, Feb. 27 — our expert prediction and betting picks for today.

The Hornets will travel to Milwaukee to take on a hot Bucks team Tuesday night. Can Charlotte continue its surprise run or will Milwaukee take care of business?

Let's get to our Hornets vs. Bucks prediction and pick.

The Hornets have been impressive since trading away P.J. Washington, going 5-1 straight-up and against the spread.

They’ve massively exceeded market expectations and actually rank as the best defense in the NBA over their last six games with a defensive rating of 100.2. They’ve also forced the third-highest turnover rate on defense, causing a turnover on 16.3% of opponent possessions. The Hornets' defensive success is definitely an outlier and unlikely to continue when you look at some of the shooting numbers teams have posted against them recently.

On paper, this should probably be a bad defense considering Charlotte is fairly devoid of length and size down low outside of Nick Richards. The lack of size has been reflected in the Hornets ranking 29th in defensive rebounding rate over that span.

This will be an extremely difficult matchup for the Hornets' defense since they'll have to defend Giannis Antetokounmpo with some combination of Grant Williams, Cody Martin and Richards. I fully expect their defense to regress here, but it may not matter for our bet in this one since they still have plenty of room for offensive improvement.

Charlotte ranks dead last in turnover rate on offense (16.7%), so if it can start to take care of the ball and just get shots up on rim, its offense is going to inevitably improve. The Hornets do rank seventh in 3-point attempt rate, so it’s not like their shot profile is absolutely awful. The Bucks' defense ranks 29th in turnover rate, so it is highly likely we see an improvement in that department for this Hornets offense.

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Milwaukee blew out Charlotte by 36 points two weeks ago, but the Hornets are clearly not the same team they were before the deadline.

The Bucks have a decided edge in the paint but they will need to defend the Hornets' 3-point shooters and guards. Charlotte's current rotation features a plethora of competent shooters in Tre Mann, Seth Curry, Vasilije Micić, Dāvis Bertāns and Brandon Miller. They have the spacing to cause issues for the Bucks' defense and they are getting up enough 3s to generate some variance in their games. Milwaukee has also been allowing more 3s since Doc Rivers took over as head coach, ranking 16th in 3-point attempt rate allowed in its last 12 games.

I wouldn’t be shocked if we saw an efficient offensive performance from the Hornets offense here.

I like the Over 224.5 in this one since I think both offenses have advantages here.

The Hornets' primary offensive issue has been their turnovers, but the Bucks' defense does not force turnovers. We also should see plenty of small-ball lineups from the Hornets, which will space Brook Lopez out away from the rim. On the flip side of the ball, Charlotte does not have the defenders to match up with Antetokounmpo, Lopez and Bobby Portis inside, so we should expect to see Milwaukee living at the rim.

I project this total closer to 227-228, so I will gladly grab the over 224.5.

Pick: Over 224.5

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