Frank Lorenzo
New Orleans Pelicans at Golden State Warriors (-15, 229.5 o/u)
It should be just another day at the office for Steph Curry and the Golden State Warriors (59-6, 30-0 Home) as they host the struggling New Orleans Pelicans (24-41, 7-26 Away) tonight at ORACLE Arena (9:30 PM Eastern).
Since getting embarrassed by the Los Angeles Lakers last week, the Warriors have won four straight games, all against Western Conference rivals. That said, they didn’t look great on Saturday, needing to rally to beat the bottom-feeding Suns (123-116) at home. They can at least build off of a strong fourth quarter, though, in which they outscored the visitors 37-21.
Curry had 35 points on the night, including 15 in the final frame.
Golden State is undisputably the best team in the NBA, but their betting lines are getting too high to reach. The Warriors have been 16-point favorites, on average, over their past five, and managed to cover just twice. They’re now 34-28-3 ATS this season, but 15-15 at home.
New Orleans comes into tonight on a three-game losing streak, dropping games to Charlotte, Memphis, and Milwaukee. They’ve been even worse against the number than the Warriors lately, going 1-4 ATS in their last five.
After making the playoffs last year, the Pelicans have regressed this season, sitting last in their division and 8.5 games out of the final postseason berth in the West.
The team has been decent at home, but absolutely dreadful on the road, winning just seven games all season. They’ve been a terrible bet outside of New Orleans, as well, registering a 13-20 ATS mark on the road. The Pelicans have long struggled in Oakland as well losing five straight (straight-up) to the Warriors at ORACLE.
But with the spread at 15 points, I’m more comfortable with the o/u. Yes, 229.5 is a pretty massive over/under, but the total has gone OVER in four of the last five between these teams (and in seven of the last ten for Golden State overall). I’ll take this one to be another shootout.
Pick: OVER (229.5).
(Photo credit: Keith Allison (Flickr: Anthony Davis) [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons. Photo may appear cropped from its original.)
