NBA Betting – Atlanta Hawks at Golden State Warriors
By Zack Garrison in News
Updated: January 17, 2018 at 9:40 am ESTPublished:
Atlanta Hawks at Golden State Warriors (-6.5, 208.5 o/u)
The two best teams in the NBA will square off for (temporary) NBA supremacy tonight when the Atlanta Hawks (53-14, 23-10 away) visit the Golden State Warriors (53-13, 30-2 home) at ORACLE Arena (10:30 PM Eastern).
This will be the second game of the season between the Eastern and Western Conference leaders; back on February 6, the Hawks trumped Golden State 124-116 in Atlanta on the strength of 23 points from guard Jeff Teague.
“They were good,” Warriors coach Steve Kerr said. “They were better than us. We broke down defensively. They had a lot to do with that because of the way they stretch you out.”
Atlanta leads the Eastern Conference by 11 games over the Cleveland Cavaliers and show no signs of slowing down; the Hawks have won six of their last eight games, including 110-103 victory over the Sacramento Kings on Monday.
“Winning on the road is something that’s really hard in our league,” said Atlanta coach Mike Budenholzer. “I think it takes a little bit of mental toughness. You have to have more attention to detail; you have to be more together. Things are not going to always go your way on the road. It’s important to establish that you can win on the road. Ultimately if you’re going to have success in the playoffs, you’re going to have to win on the road.”
Winning on the road will be incrementally harder tonight for the Hawks who will be without Kyle Korver. Korver averages just over 12 PPG and is shooting a shade over 50-percent from three.
Golden State, meanwhile, is seven games up on Memphis for top spot in the West and has a 7-1 record over its last eight games. Their only loss over that stretch was a 114-103 setback to the Denver Nuggets in which Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, and Marreese Speights all got the night off.
With a full squad, the Warriors got back in the win column on Monday with a surprisingly close 108-105 victory over the Lakers.
It wasn’t all good news for Golden State on Monday, though, as shooting guard Klay Thompson suffered an ankle injury that will sideline him for about a week.
Even without the second “Splash Brother”, the Warriors are 6.5-point favorites for tonight’s game; the head-to-head ATS has been pretty tight between these teams, but the Warriors have covered in six of the last ten.
(Photo credit: Keith Allison (flickr) [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/legalcode]. Photo has been cropped.)
Sports Writer
Zack is a tour guide whose favorite sports are football, baseball, and golf. He enjoys giving obnoxious commentary during games and hopes to some day write a book about sports. His favorite underdog victory was the Diamondbacks beating the Yankees in game 7 of the World Series.
