NBA Betting – Cleveland Cavaliers at Golden State Warriors
By Zack Garrison in News
Updated: January 17, 2018 at 9:40 am ESTPublished:
Cleveland Cavaliers at Golden State Warriors (-12, 206.5 o/u)
The Golden State Warriors (28-5) will try to stretch their win streak to six tonight when they host the Lebron James-less Cleveland Cavaliers (19-17) tonight at Oracle Arena (10:30 p.m. Eastern).
Cleveland comes in having lost three in a row and six of seven. James has missed six of those seven games with back and knee issues, and his absence has been noticeable. Without their leading scorer, the Cavs put up just 80 points in a loss to the Milwaukee Bucks and 92 when they were downed by the dreadful Philadelphia 76ers.
have lost just one of their 15 season games at home.
Making matters worse for Cleveland, point guard Kyrie Irving is also battling back issues (though he is expected to play tonight) and center Anderson Varejao is out for the year with an ankle injury, making them vulnerable in the paint.
The Cavaliers traded for forward Iman Shumpert and guard J.R. Smith on the weekend in an effort to both shore up their frontcourt and shake up a floundering roster. However, assessing the full impact of the trade on the Cleveland frontcourt will have to wait as Shumpert is out indefinitely with a dislocated shoulder.
Meanwhile, the Warriors remain the top team in the NBA despite losing back-to-back games at the end of December. Their play at home has kept them ahead of the pack; Golden State has lost just once this season at Oracle Arena.
For the past 12 games, the Warriors have had to soldier on without center Andrew Bogut, who leads the team in both rebounds and blocks. The emergence of Marreese Speights has made Bogut’s absence easier to digest. Speights has scored in double-figures in nine of the last 12 games, including a 26 point performance against the Atlantic-leading Raptors, and Golden State has gone 9-3 without their seven-footer.
As if the Warriors needed any help, Bogut may make his return tonight.
Golden State has won six of the last ten meetings against Cleveland and, on the paper it looks they will win soundly again tonight.
(Photo credit: Keith Allison (flickr) [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/legalcode]. Photo may appear 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.
