NBA - 709 Golden State Warriors @ 710 Minnesota Timberwolves
Projected Line: Golden State by 3 points
Minnesota has an excellent coach and a group of tough players, so they keep staying competitive on their games even though they are shorthanded right now. However, there are two players that currently form the team's structure (not mentioning Kevin Love and Ricky Rubio, who are yet to play this season): Andrei Kirilenko and Nikola Pekovic. These two players are the key players of this team, as on the team's net points per 100 possessions, Minnesota is +7.7 and +8.3 with Kirilenko and Pekovic on the court, while the Wolves are -1.7 and -0.5 without Kirilenko and Pekovic on the court respectively.
The problem for Minnesota is that Pekovic is injured and without him, the Wolves lose their only reference down low, who is capable of scoring points on the inside. This gets even worse when his backup, Greg Stiemsma, lacks any kind of offensive skills to replace him and he is coming from a 0-6 FG and a 1-4 FT game against the poor frontcourt defense of the Bobcats! With Minnesota struggling on the outside (18-61 29.5% FG from 16-23 feet on the last three games) and without Pekovic to give them easy points down low, they will automatically have to perform extremely well on defense just to stay competitive on their games.
This bodes well with the Warriors, who are currently struggling on the interior defense with Andrew Bogut out due to another injury. They are allowing 67% FG at the rim, but with Nikola Pekovic out, Golden State is on a good defensive spot for tonight. The fact that Golden State is 4-4 right now is almost a miracle, having in account their best two players, Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson, are just shooting 37.1% FG and 35.8% FG this season! However, Minnesota has been heavily struggling on backcourt defense this season. It happened at Toronto, it happened at Brooklyn, it happened against Indiana (with George Hill being super aggressive) and it happened at Chicago (with Kirk Hinrich getting injured and Nate Robinson having a big offensive game with 8-14 FG and 18 points! It also happened on their last game against Charlotte, where Kemba Walker and Ramon Sessions played very well, especially Walker, who had a good 9-19 FG shooting night! This has been Minnesota's weakest link and the Warriors should take advantage of that tonight, with both Curry and Thompson having a bounce back game against the Wolves poor backcourt defense. With Minnesota also struggling on offense big time tonight, I expect Golden State to pick up a road win tonight and so, I'll be taking them in here.
Pick: 3 units (Single Dime Play) on 709 Golden State Warriors (+1) @ -110 / 1.91 on Bookmaker
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