Pelicans vs Magic Odds, Picks, and Predictions Tonight: Road to Zion Paved Poorly for Orlando

When a team hasn’t sniffed true contention in a decade-plus, you’re never quite sure what to make of it when they start the season hot. So, when the Orlando Magic came out of the gates at 14-5, I wasn’t sure if they were for real, or merely a flash in the pan.

They’re for real. With 13 games remaining, they find themselves in competition not just to avoid the Play-In Tournament, but to host a playoff series.

The New Orleans Pelicans have their own ambitions, mind you. After a string of three straight victories, they’re within striking distance of supplanting the Los Angeles Clippers for the 4-seed.

Both teams are rolling, and both need every win down the stretch of the season, making for a high stakes clash on Thursday, March 21.

My free NBA picks and predictions for Pelicans vs. Magic believe the NBA odds are treating this matchup as much closer than it truly is.

Pelicans vs Magic odds

Pelicans vs Magic predictions

Would you believe me if I told you that the New Orleans Pelicans are one of the best five teams in the NBA?

While they don’t get nearly the publicity of some of their peers, their statistical resume is getting hard to dispute. Their point differential suggests they’re even better than their 42-26 record, which already has them inching closer to the top of the West standings despite elite competition.

People are beginning to take notice, but oddsmakers are still making them only slight favorites against the Orlando Magic on Thursday. While the Magic are riding a four-game winning streak of their own, I would argue that the Pelicans' recent play places them in a different tier than the scrappy, upstart Magic.

Two things are primarily driving this stretch for New Orleans. One is that they finally got healthy. Perhaps more than any other good team over the last few years, the Pelicans' efforts to contend for the top of the standings have been undone by frequent and untimely injuries.

Many of those injuries have also prevented Zion Williamson from reaching his full potential. Williamson has two seasons with fewer than 30 games played, and his career-high in games is just 61. 

With improved availability, Zion is now seeing significant in-season growth, which is reason no. 2. Williamson has already played 57 games this season and is playing the best all-around basketball of his career.

He’s once again flashing the athletic highlights that had many believing he was the future face of the NBA. But it’s not just scoring that’s improved for Williamson, his improvements are holistic and they are reverberating throughout the entire team.

He’s playing much better on the defensive end than at any prior point of his career. Zion was known for drifting through plays on defense previously, now he’s largely locked in on a play-to-play basis.

When a team's best player gives poor effort on defense, it infects the rest of the roster. Now Zion is digging in, often taking on difficult assignments and using his unique combination of strength and dexterity to hang with both wings and bigs.

Zion has continued to add to his playmaking game as well. He’s up to a career-high 5.9 assists per 36 minutes, nearly a full assist higher than his previous caree-best. And beyond counting stats, he’s just trusting his teammates more and being willing to make the pass that leads to the assist.

The Magic have four straight wins, but they have come against some of the NBA’s worst teams. And they have underperformed their spread differential over the past two weeks by an average of 3.2 points a game per Cleaning the Glass. 

The last good team the Magic played (the New York Knicks) smoked them while still missing three of their starters. 

The Pels have something cooking. Their stars and role players have never looked like they know their respective jobs this well, and the team’s cohesion is as high as I have ever seen it. It makes this minuscule line my favorite bet on Thursday’s board.

My best bet: Pelicans -1.5 (-110 at SIA)

Pelicans vs Magic same-game parlay

Pelicans -2 

Zion Williamson Over 23.5 points 

Franz Wagner Under 1.5 threes made 

+350 at DraftKings

My own concern with Zion as a player hasn’t been so much his availability as it has been his declining efficiency and production year over year. It looked like the injuries, in addition to seeing him miss significant time, were sapping his ability to get to the rim and finish at his best-in-class level.

While for the season he’s still down relative to his career bests, he’s clearly got his bounce all the way back over the past month. There are reports that Williamson recently redoubled his commitment to conditioning and that he has lost upwards of 25 pounds since the start of the season.

You can see it in the way he moves. His explosion is perhaps not back to Duke Blue Devil levels, but it looks as good as it has in the NBA for a long, long time. He’s averaging 29.6 points per game over his last five and overwhelming some of the NBA’s best defenders, including Kawhi Leonard.

If you’ve followed my prop picks for the last month or so, you’ll know I am fond of shorting Franz Wagner’s shooting props. While the juice on the Under is getting a bit heavy for me to make it my best bet, I feel great about making it the final leg of Thursday’s same-game parlay. 

Wagner has only hit two or more threes in a game twice over his last 16 games. In his last five games, he’s hit one three and is averaging only 2.6 attempts. He’s not getting guarded, and his confidence is all the way gone right now. Until he shows massive improvement, there is going to be value until this prop drops below 1.5.

Learn how to bet a same-game parlay with these helpful tips and strategies.

Pelicans vs Magic spread and Over/Under analysis

New Orleans opened as -1.5 road favorites for Thursday, with some books now bumping that to -2.

The case for Orlando is their home dominance. The Magic have been the best home team against the spread in the NBA this season. They cover 71.9% of the time, for a record of 23-9. That record is a big reason this line is so short, despite what I believe to be glaring differences in team quality between New Orleans and Orlando.

The Pels are one of the stronger road teams however, with a 20-13-1 record ATS. The Pels’ recent body of work is just more impressive to me, and while the Magic have a stout defense, New Orleans has the offensive weapons to put pressure on them.

Thursday’s total came in with as low an opening line as you’ll see at 210.5. Early money has even pushed that down a point to 209.5 at some sportsbooks.

These are two of the best seven defenses in the Association, and the trends favor another low-scoring game. The Under is 18-14 in Magic home games and 19-14-1 in Pelicans road games this season.

On a single day of rest, the trends are even more overwhelming, with the Under cashing in 25 of the Pelicans’ 41 games and 27 of the Magic’s 40.

Pelicans vs Magic betting trend to know

The Pelicans are 20-13-1 ATS on the road. Find more NBA betting trends for Pelicans vs. Magic.

Pelicans vs Magic game info

Pelicans vs Magic latest injuries

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