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Posted at 10:00 AM EST. Odds are subject to change.

New Orleans +9½ -110 over Golden State

10:00 PM EST. The schedule makes this one even better than advertised. Tonight is the fifth and final game of Golden State's homestand, the Warriors have won the first four of the stand and seven straight overall, and starting Wednesday they disappear for five straight on the road, Houston, San Antonio, New Orleans, Dallas and Memphis, and do not sleep in their own beds again until November 22. This is the classic get away game at the end of a long stay home, bags half packed, families handled, heads already on the trip, and a 4-6 opponent in the building that nobody circles on the calendar. Add in that Golden State needed overtime to put Orlando away on Saturday night, and the legs and the focus are both suspect for a team being asked to win by double digits.

The Warriors are also running out of bodies to bury anyone with. Jimmy Butler is gone until January after ACL surgery, Moses Moody is out until December, Kristaps Porzingis is not with the team, and Will Richard just tore a ligament in his thumb, which adds up to roughly 98 minutes a night of rotation sitting in street clothes. What is left is Stephen Curry, Draymond Green and a bench held together by Gary Payton II and hope. New Orleans is precisely the wrong opponent for a thin, distracted favourite, because the Pelicans play fast, score 120.5 points a game, second best in the league, and hunt turnovers with 11.2 steals a night, also second best. Zion Williamson is shooting 59.3 percent and just went a perfect 9 for 9 for 25 points last night, Jeremiah Fears has scored 19 or more in three straight games, and Trey Murphy III dropped 26 last night, so the Pelicans have three different ways to keep the scoreboard moving and keep this thing inside two possessions.

Of course we know and so do the odds makers thar New Orleans is on the second night of a back to back after giving up 139 to the Clippers last night, Yves Missi is out, Dejounte Murray has missed two straight for personal reasons and was still unresolved this morning, and asking a leaky defense to behave two nights running is a real ask. But a cover does not need the Pelicans to defend like champions. It needs them to score, which they do against everybody, against a favourite whose rotation is gutted, whose legs went overtime on Saturday, and whose minds are already at the airport.

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Posted at 10:00 AM EST. Odds are subject to change.

Houston -8½ -105 over Denver

8:30 PM EST. Denver's weekend deserves its own box score. The Nuggets beat Indiana 114-102 in Mexico City on Saturday afternoon, got to the airport that night, boarded at 9:00 PM, and then sat in their seats until 3:25 in the morning while a replacement part failed to fix a door that would not close. They were back in a hotel by 5:00 AM, finally took off Sunday at 4:54 PM, and landed in Houston around 6:30 PM Sunday evening, less than 24 hours before tip, having not practiced since before the Mexico City game, with Monday's shootaround cancelled outright. And then the injury report landed and all five starters questionable, Nikola Jokic with a sprained right elbow, Jamal Murray with a shin contusion, Aaron Gordon and Cameron Johnson under lower body management, Christian Braun with a calf problem and an illness, plus sixth man DeMar DeRozan and his back spasms for good measure. Teams do not produce a report like that by accident. That is an organisation telling the league its players are held together by spite and airplane sleep.

Houston is built to punish exactly this. The Rockets own one of the two best offences in the league in the early going and a top ten defence, they are 4-1 at the Toyota Center, and they have covered this very number in four of their last five home games. Alperen Sengun is running the show at 21.5 points, 8.8 rebounds and 7.8 assists a night, Kevin Durant is adding 20.8, Jabari Smith Jr. 17.3, and the length of Amen Thompson and company is a miserable thing to face on dead legs, because tired teams settle, reach and foul, and Houston lives at the rim and the line. The Rockets also come in angry, having dropped two straight to Minnesota and Phoenix after a 7-1 start, and there is no softer landing spot for a bounce back than a home game against an opponent that spent its weekend in an airport.

The honest caveats, because this number depends on them: questionable is not out, and if Jokic and Murray both drag themselves onto the floor, Denver is a team that has won three straight on the road and four of five overall, and Houston is missing both backup centres, Steven Adams and Clint Capela, leaving Sengun alone against the best big in the world with no foul trouble margin at all. Houston also shot 38.7 percent in Phoenix on Saturday, so the home side is not exactly humming. But a bet on Houston here is not really a bet that all six Nuggets sit. It is a bet that a team which slept in an airport, skipped two days of preparation and is nursing six separate ailments cannot bring its A game on the road against a rested, deep, motivated favourite, and that even a diminished Denver effort leaves the margin in double digits by the fourth quarter.

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