yes, that is true. but if it hits NO head on with in the eastern eyewall pushing a dome of water from the sea, it will flood anyway, and the wind damage will be on top of that.
I'll take the western part of the storm and the flooding from the lake over that.
Maestri says imagine what happens if a huge storm hits just to the east of the city."The hurricane is spinning counter-clockwise, it's now got a wall of water in front of it some 30 to 40 feet high, as it approaches the levees that surround the city, it tops those levees," describes Maestri. "The water comes over the top - and first the communities on the west side of the Mississippi river go under. Now Lake Ponchetrain— which is on the eastern side of the community—now that water from Lake Ponchetrain is now pushed on the population that is fleeing from the western side, and everybody's caught in the middle. The bowl now completely fills and we've got the entire community under water, some 20 to 30 feet under water."
Sorry to say, but your intuition is just plain wrong.
PS. It would be the same type of effect that did in Galveston in 1900.