{"id":11674,"date":"2010-12-18T14:55:12","date_gmt":"2010-12-18T19:55:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/?p=11674"},"modified":"2010-12-18T14:55:12","modified_gmt":"2010-12-18T19:55:12","slug":"western-conference-battle-golden-state-vs-portland-picks-predictions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/western-conference-battle-golden-state-vs-portland-picks-predictions-11674\/","title":{"rendered":"Western Conference Battle: Golden State vs Portland Picks & Predictions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Golden State Warriors at Portland Trail Blazers
\nSaturday, 12\/18\/10, 10:00 PM EDT
\nOpening Point Spread:\u00a0 Portland -5
\nCurrent Betting Line:\u00a0 Portland -5.5
\nOpening Total:\u00a0 195
\nCurrent Total:\u00a0 197<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
The Portland Trail Blazers will be without All-Star guard Brandon Roy for a second consecutive night in hosing the Golden State Warriors at the Rose Garden<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Golden State has dropped 12 of its last 14 games overall and may be without guard Stephen Curry for the fourth straight game.\u00a0 \u201cWe\u2019re going to go by as if he\u2019s not playing,\u201d coach Keith Smart stated.\u00a0 \u201cIt will be a bonus if he is there.\u201d\u00a0 The Warriors would love to welcome him back as he managed to score a career-high 42 points in snapping a four-game losing streak in Portland with a 122-116 win on April 14 last season.\u00a0 The team ranks 13th in the league offensively in averaging 100.7 points per game, while giving up 106.7 points a contest.\u00a0 Golden State is 12-13 ATS on the season and 7-7 ATS as a road underdog of 3.5 to 6 points over the past three years and listed in that range on the NBA lines page.<\/p>\n

The Warriors have been plugging in guard Reggie Williams in Curry\u2019s spot in the starting lineup, as he\u2019s averaged 22.3 points in the last four games.\u00a0 \u201cRight now my job is just to try to step up and fill the void and try to take care of business until he comes back,\u201d said Williams.\u00a0 \u201cThose guys encourage me to shoot.\u00a0 I just have to take it upon myself to be more aggressive.\u201d\u00a0 It\u2019s unfortunate that the squad doesn\u2019t match-up against the Minnesota Timberwolves in all 82 games of the season, as its last two wins have come against them.<\/p>\n

Portland is set to play is second game without star guard Brandon Roy in the lineup and will try to win its fifth straight game at the Rose Garden in the process.\u00a0 The Blazers avoided a fourth consecutive loss with a 107-102 victory over the Timberwolves on Friday. \u00a0 \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of character on this team,\u201d said center Joel Przybilla.\u00a0 \u201cGuys stepped up through a lot of adversity.\u201d\u00a0 Head coach Nate McMillan may have an even more shuffled lineup tonight, with Marcus Camby and Nicolas Batum each sitting out the second half of Friday\u2019s victory over Minnesota.\u00a0 Portland is 28-14 ATS when playing on back-to-back days.<\/p>\n

The winning team in this series has scored 100 or more points in each of the last 14 games in the series and both teams averaged at least 106 points per game in four meetings last year.\u00a0 Portland will need to limit Golden State\u2019s fastbreak opportunities tonight due to being outscored in the category by a 82-37 margin last year.\u00a0 Each of the squad\u2019s 12 wins this season have come win holding opponents under 100 points this season.<\/p>\n

Bettors will be interested in the Warriors being 5-11-1 ATS over their last 17 games, while the Blazers are 2-6 ATS as a favorite.<\/p>\n

The NBA handicappers at Maddux Sports are off to an incredible start and ready for more on Saturday night!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Golden State Warriors at Portland Trail Blazers Saturday, 12\/18\/10, 10:00 PM EDT Opening Point Spread:\u00a0 Portland -5 Current Betting Line:\u00a0 Portland -5.5 Opening Total:\u00a0 195 Current Total:\u00a0 197 Golden State has dropped 12 of its last 14 games overall and may be without guard Stephen Curry for the fourth straight game.\u00a0 \u201cWe\u2019re going to go […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":181,"featured_media":9296,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1444,133],"tags":[1366,1011,3304,3641,830,3914,14],"class_list":["post-11674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines","category-nba-handicapping","tag-brandon-roy","tag-golden-state-warriors","tag-marcus-camby","tag-nate-mcmillan","tag-portland-trail-blazers","tag-rose-garden","tag-stephen-curry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11674","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\/181"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11674"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11674\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11675,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11674\/revisions\/11675"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}