76ers at Hornets: Halloween Night Grind-It-Out Special

Happy Halloween, degens. While the rest of America hands out candy, we're eyeing a potential scoring drought in Charlotte on Saturday night. Both squads are dragging themselves off Friday games, and if you've watched enough NBA basketball, you know what back-to-backs do to shooting percentages—spoiler alert, nothing good.

The Hornets are already offensively challenged without the B2B excuse. They're launching threes at a ghastly 30.6% clip and limping along at 101.7 offensive efficiency, which is basically basketball purgatory. Now subtract two projected starting backcourt pieces and things get uglier. Charlotte grinds at 99.3 possessions per game, and when the slower team dictates tempo—which history says they will—Philadelphia's usual 106.9 pace becomes irrelevant.

Tired legs plus depleted backcourt plus dreadful shooting plus slow pace equals one thing: points are going to be harder to come by than rational takes on Twitter. DarkHorse likes the under 216.5 here with moderate confidence, and it's not hard to see why. This has all the makings of a rock fight where both teams spend the fourth quarter bricking open looks and praying for the final buzzer.

Lay the points if you want. We're riding the under and preparing for a Halloween horror show at the rim.