NBA - 709 Golden State Warriors @ 710 Oklahoma City Thunder
Projected Line: 194 points
Golden State is coming from a good road win against Minnesota, where Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson were better than in the previous games with 7-12 FG and 5-14 FG respectively. But the Warriors won this game due to their frontcourt edge, as they had a 17-11 offensive rebound edge, while grabbing almost 59% of the rebounds! David Lee shot 8-15 FG, Harrison Barnes 8-15 FG, Festus Ezeli 2-2 FG and Carl Landry 6-8 FG! The Warriors scored 58 points in the paint, while shooting 22-31 FG at the rim and 6-10 FG from 3-9 feet! Minnesota fought a lot with Andrei Kirilenko and Alexey Shved having good games, but without a good frontcourt player, the Wolves not only struggled to score easy points (22 points in the paint and 10-19 FG at the rim), as their interior defense was also gone.
The problem for Golden State is that they won't be able to do anything similar today against Oklahoma City. The Thunder is #6 in the league in defensive rebounding rate with 74,5%, while they are also #7 in points in the paint allowed with 38.6 ppg and #1 in post up defense, so Golden State's frontcourt won't have an easy task tonight. This will put both Klay Thompson and Stephen Curry in a lot of pressure and they are still both far from being on a great moment right now.
On the other side, we have a super underrated Golden State defense! I've mentioned Oklahoma City's nice defensive numbers on defensive rebounding and points in the paint allowed, but the truth is that Golden State's defense is even better than Oklahoma City in those two areas! Coach Mark Jackson doesn't want the team to play with a small lineup and so, the Warriors have now a nice interior defense.
Oklahoma City has been red hot on the offense with back to back good outside shooting games against Memphis and New Orleans. However, note that Golden State is #3 in the league in defending spot up plays, while allowing just 0.84 PPP! I believe there isn't a perception that Golden State is now a top 10 defensive team in the league, but all my numbers confirm that. Therefore, I expect a relatively low scoring game in here and so, I'll take the Under on this contest.
Pick: 3 units (Single Dime Play) on 709/710 Under 198,5 @ -110 / 1.91 on Bookmaker
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