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Minnesota Timberwolves at Golden State Warriors (-15.5, 225 o/u)
The Golden State Warriors (69-8, 37-1 Home) can take one more step towards history tonight when they host the Minnesota Timberwolves (25-52, 12-26 Away) at ORACLE Arena in Oakland (10:30 PM Eastern).
The Warriors have all but clinched the no. 1 seed in the West. The only question remaining for the dominant squad is whether they will go down in the record books as the most dominant team of all time. The ’95-’96 Bulls currently own the best regular season record (72-10). If Golden State can take four of its last five, they’ll surpass Jordan and company.
It won’t be an easy road for the Warriors; four of their final five games are against the second-place Spurs and the fifth-placed Grizzlies. The team would have had a little more breathing room but saw its NBA-record 54-game home winning streak end against Boston on Friday night (109-106).
They bounced back on Sunday by smashing Portland, 136-111, led by 39 points from soon to be two-time MVP Steph Curry. It was clear Golden State wanted to send a message, and they did.
“With five games left we still have a piece of the regular season to finish off, but not losing two in a row is special,” said Curry to the Associated Press. “Last year it was not lose three in a row, and we were able to accomplish that. Every time we had a loss we’ve been able to bounce back and have a top-notch performance. … When we take a punch, we learn from it and be aggressive the next opportunity like last night.”
Now at 37-1 at home, the Golden State Warriors became the first team in NBA history to make 1,000-three pointers in a season. That number is going to go up tonight against Minnesota’s porous defense. The T-Wolves surrender over 105 PPG (24th in the league) and give up nearly nine triples per game.
That said, the Wolves played the Warriors tight the last time they met, losing 109-104 in Minny. And they held the high-scoring Mavericks to just 88 points last time out. Unfortunately, the offense could only muster 78 points of their own as the team dropped its third straight.
Minnesota is third-last in the West and has nothing left to play for at this point. But the young squad will look to build confidence for next year and spoil the party for the Warriors. The spread (15.5 points) is ridiculously high. Bank on the Timberwolves (who have hit the over in 17 of their last 25 road games offense) to score the ball better tonight and help this game reach the over.
Pick: OVER (225).
(Photo Credit: Matthew Addie (Flickr) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/.)
