Projected Line: San Antonio by 12 points
Golden State won their series against Denver due to a lot of merit from their head coach Mark Jackson, especially since David Lee went down with a hip injury. He adjusted by playing super small, with a lineup that featured Stephen Curry, Jarrett Jack, Klay Thompson, Harrison Barnes and Andrew Bogut. That lineup crushed the Nuggets. In 76 minutes, this combination outscored Denver by 15.4 points per 100 possessions, while their defense surprisingly bested the #1 regular season marks. This was possible due to Kenneth Faried's injury and with George Karl's panic, who ended up putting his team playing small as well, while Denver's frontcourt players showed not to be offensively skilled enough to pound the Warriors down low.
Things will be completely different on this series against San Antonio, as Tim Duncan seems to be 27 years old once again, while Tiago Splitter seems to be ready to play tonight. It looks like Carl Landry will be inserted into the starting lineup for this series and the truth is that Golden State got outscored by Denver with Landry on the court! Golden State had 1.21, 1.78, 1.21, 1.15, 1.23 and 1.21 PPP on spot up shooting throughout the series against Denver, but the Nuggets's spot up defense is the worst in the league, while San Antonio has a much better perimeter defense and so, they will certainly bring more problems to the Warriors's shooters. Both Kenneth Faried and JaVale McGee lack defensive discipline to help their team on the perimeter, while George Karl also screwed up a lot on the rotations throughout the series, including putting a terrible defender like Andre Miller guarding Stephen Curry in key moments of the games.
I also expect the Warriors to struggle on the defensive end. They were a subpar defensive team on post up defense throughout the regular season and even though Andrew Bogut's presence in the paint is important for them, he can't play major minutes and he is still looking to be physically limited. Denver's offense sucked on this area with a 6% volume on post ups throughout the series, but San Antonio with Tim Duncan will base their offensive game on post ups and use Tim Duncan as a "point-center" during this series. Tony Parker looked well on the series against the Lakers and he will have a super edge on offense over Stephen Curry and Jarrett Jack, who are poor defenders, and so, they will be unable to stop Parker's great penetrations into the basket, like it happened in the previous series against Ty Lawson. Therefore, I expect the Spurs to start this series immediately with an easy win and so, I'll be taking them in here tonight.
Pick: 3 units (Single Dime Play) on 702 San Antonio Spurs (-9) @ -110 / 1.91 on Bookmaker
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