{"id":11197,"date":"2010-12-02T18:44:11","date_gmt":"2010-12-02T23:44:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/?p=11197"},"modified":"2010-12-02T18:44:11","modified_gmt":"2010-12-02T23:44:11","slug":"free-nba-picks-phoenix-suns-at-golden-state-warriors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/free-nba-picks-phoenix-suns-at-golden-state-warriors-11197\/","title":{"rendered":"Free NBA Picks: Phoenix Suns At Golden State Warriors"},"content":{"rendered":"

Phoenix Suns AT Golden State Warriors
\nThursday, Dec 2nd,\u00a0 10:35 EST
\nCurrent Betting Line:\u00a0 Golden State -2.5
\nCurrent total: 228
\nCurrent Moneyline:\u00a0 Undefined.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"
Second Year Guard Stephen Curry Will Lead the Warriors High Octane Offense.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Golden State and Phoenix come into tonight with nearly identical records.\u00a0 Golden State is 8-10; Phoenix is 8-9.\u00a0 So it goes without saying that this should be a pretty tight matchup between two teams that don’t play a lot of defense.\u00a0 Phoenix is giving up 111.9 (!) pts a game, and Golden State is giving up 106.5.\u00a0 Both teams are capable of putting up numbers too, so as high as the current total sounds, it belongs that high.<\/p>\n

Golden State is 5-3 at Oracle Arena this year, and Phoenix is 3-5 on the road.\u00a0 Both teams enter tonight coming off a loss.\u00a0 Golden State lost to San Antonio by 20.\u00a0 Phoenix lost to Denver by 5 in a shootout (138-133).<\/p>\n

The total has gone OVER in all five of Phoenix’s last five games.\u00a0 It has also gone OVER in 10 of Golden State’s last 14 at home against the Suns, including going OVER in five of the last five.<\/p>\n

Golden State has three injured players:\u00a0 Amundson, who played for the Suns last year; rookie Ekpe Udoh; and swingman Brendan Wright.\u00a0 Phoenix is without the services of second year center Robin Lopez.<\/p>\n

Some key matchups tonight:<\/p>\n

Stephen Curry vs. Steve Nash<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nash has age and experience, and is one of the best point guards ever to play the game, but Curry is young, fast, explosive and sure to have a great NBA career.\u00a0 This should be a great matchup in a high paced game.\u00a0 Expect both players to have 10+ assists tonight, and both could score a lot themselves, too.\u00a0 Nash enters the game averaging 18.9 ppg and 9.6 apg, slightly better than the two previous years.\u00a0 Curry, meanwhile, averages a bit more points than Nash (20.8 for Curry) and less assists by a fair margin (5.8 for Curry). Curry shoots solid percentages across the board – 47.9% FG, 41.3% Threes, 89.7% FT.\u00a0 If he pulls his field goal percentage up a bit to 50% (unlikely, but possible) and his FT% up 0.3%, he will enter the exclusive 50\/40\/90 club, which Nash is already a part of.
\n
\nMonta Ellis vs. Jason Richardson<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ellis is having another great year, following a great year last year.\u00a0 This year he is averaging 24.2 points per game, 4.9 assists per game, and 3.6 boards a game.\u00a0 He’s playing near 40 minutes a game and he averaged over 41 minutes a game last year, so most of the time while you have the Warriors on the TV, Ellis is in the game.\u00a0 Richardson is no slouch himself, but of course plays no where near as many minutes as Ellis (33 for Richardson).\u00a0 He puts up 21 ppg, 4.8 rpg, 1.4 spg, and is shooting a red hot 46% from behind the arc!\u00a0 He averages nearly 3 threes a game and is one of the best three point shooters in the league.\u00a0 This matchup, like the point guard matchup, will produce gaudy stats.<\/p>\n

This will be a real shootout tonight.\u00a0 Both teams are stacked with scorers and scarce in defenders, and will put up big numbers.\u00a0 I wouldn’t be surprised at all to see both teams score more than 120, so the total of 228 is very enticing to go over on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Phoenix Suns AT Golden State Warriors Thursday, Dec 2nd,\u00a0 10:35 EST Current Betting Line:\u00a0 Golden State -2.5 Current total: 228 Current Moneyline:\u00a0 Undefined. Golden State and Phoenix come into tonight with nearly identical records.\u00a0 Golden State is 8-10; Phoenix is 8-9.\u00a0 So it goes without saying that this should be a pretty tight matchup between […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40250,"featured_media":9300,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1444,133],"tags":[1011,577],"class_list":["post-11197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines","category-nba-handicapping","tag-golden-state-warriors","tag-phoenix-suns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40250"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11197"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11197\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11198,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11197\/revisions\/11198"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}