A potential NBA Finals preview on Thursday night as the defending champion Golden State Warriors head \u2018North of the Border\u2019 to take on the Toronto Raptors. The Raptors have emerged as the NBA\u2019s best team at the quarter pole and have been not only dominant but consistently so. They\u2019re 18-4 overall with identical 9-2 records on the road and at the Scotiabank Arena. In the other corner, the Golden State Warriors aren\u2019t exactly \u2018struggling\u2019 at 15-7 but they\u2019ve had some well publicized chemistry issues and have had a hard time wining on the road. They\u2019re 11-2 at home but just 4-5 as a visitor.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s no better feeling than \u2018rolling the dice\u2019 and hitting a winner and so far that appears the Toronto Raptors have done just that with their acquisition of the mercurial Kawhi Leonard. Toronto sent well regarded DeMar DeRozen, Jakob Poeltl and a first round draft choice to San Antonio for Leonard and Danny Green. Leonard had become a huge distraction in San Antonio which made it a high risk trade for the Raptors. Making it an even higher risk\u2014he\u2019s in the final year of his contract and there\u2019s no guarantee that he\u2019ll re-sign with Toronto. Even with these extenuating circumstances it\u2019s been a great trade for Toronto and Leonard is playing at a very high level. He\u2019s doing it all\u2014averaging over 24 PPG, over 8 rebounds per game and adding assists and steals in the process. Not bad numbers for a player who says that he\u2019s still \u2018learning his team\u2019.<\/p>\n
Golden State is far from being the wrecking crew that eviscerated the Cleveland Cavaliers in last year\u2019s NBA Finals. It must be noted, however, that the NBA season is still in its early stages and there\u2019s every reason to think that they\u2019ll get on the same page well before the playoffs. They appear to have shaken their funk of early November which saw them lose four straight and six of eight. They\u2019ve now won three straight though they continue to struggle against the pointspread and are currently on a 2-9 ATS run. Given their status as a \u2018public team\u2019 and the league\u2019s dominant franchise over the past few years these ATS struggles aren\u2019t a huge surprise.<\/p>\n
Toronto hasn\u2019t been a great pointspread play either despite their early season success. They stand at 12-10 against the spread though they\u2019re just 5-6 versus the number on their home floor. In most situations they\u2019re at or just under \u2018breakeven\u2019 with their most impressive situational stat being a 6-2 SU\/5-3 ATS mark against opponents with winning records. With their SU success, however, they might just be a bit overvalued here. More significantly, they\u2019re catching the Warriors without Stephen Curry who will miss this game with a groin injury. He\u2019s definitely a huge part of the Warriors\u2019 success but the line appears to have overcompensated for his absence. The last time the Warriors played at Toronto was on January 13 when Golden State was a 5.5 point road favorite. This against a Raptors team that finished 59-23 last season. Curry is good but we\u2019re looking at a 15 point swing in the other direction and that\u2019s just too much.<\/p>\n
BET GOLDEN STATE WARRIORS +9.5 OVER TORONTO RAPTORS<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A potential NBA Finals preview on Thursday night as the defending champion Golden State Warriors head \u2018North of the Border\u2019…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[134],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nba"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4812"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4812\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4814,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4812\/revisions\/4814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}