Do the Golden State Warriors belong in your NBA picks this Wednesday when they visit the Los Angeles Lakers for the Western play-in?
Golden State Warriors vs. Los Angeles Lakers
Wednesday 19th May 2021 10:00 PM EDT at Staples Center
Is it already too late to “sell high” on the Los Angeles Lakers (42-30 SU, 32-39-1 ATS)? The defending champions are a mess heading into the Western Conference play-in tournament; they remind me of their opponents, the Golden State Warriors (39-33 SU, 37-35 ATS), when they limped into the 2019 NBA Finals and broke down versus the Toronto Raptors. Only instead of Kevin Durant and Klay Thompson, it’s LeBron James and Anthony Davis who are putting their bodies on the line. Sadly for our NBA picks, the early birds have already descended on the Lakers. The fine folks at Youwager opened them as 6.5-point favorites for Wednesday’s play-in game, and it took less than 20 minutes for the sharps to hammer that line down to –5. Los Angeles are laying 4.5 points at press time. Is that still too many points?
Klutch Stats
Maybe. Jeff Sagarin ran the numbers at The USA Today and projects the Lakers to win by 2.48 points using his eigenvector analysis, and 2.42 points using his Rating formula. That still leaves us a 2-point margin between the projections and the actual NBA odds, enough to place a proper single-unit bet on the Warriors. Here’s the thing: FiveThirtyEight project L.A. to win by seven points. What the what?! That’s the thing with projections – they’re all over the place for this matchup, and they should be, given how Davis (calf) and James (ankle) have been in and out of the lineup all year. It’s not just that; the arrival of Andre Drummond (minus-1.7 BPM), who happens to be represented by Klutch Sports, has put head coach Frank Vogel in the unenviable position of having to mollify James (Klutch) while still finding minutes for Marc Gasol (plus-2.1 BPM, non-Klutch). Will Vogel do the right thing and use Big Spain in more high-leverage situations, or leave him to come off the bench against Golden State’s second-stringers?
Addition By Subtraction
Of course, Thompson (Achilles) remains out for the Warriors, as do Kelly Oubre (wrist) and James Wiseman (knee), but Golden State might be better off without those last two gentlemen. Oubre was an inefficient volume scorer this year at minus-2.1 on the Box Plus/Minus numbers at Basketball Reference; Wiseman was last among team regulars at minus-5.4 BPM. The Dubs are 14-5 SU and 13-6 ATS since Wiseman played his last game on April 10.
So, how about that total then? Sagarin projects these two teams to score 217.85 points between them, well below the opening total of 222 points at Bovada. But once again, the sharps filled their bellies on that early line, moving the total down to 219.5 points at press time. FiveThirtyEight don’t project totals; as a rule, we only quote freely-available sources here at the ranch, but I can tell you that there’s a pretty wide range of over/unders at the paid sites we’re looking at right now. Let’s make it a small bet on the Under anyway, hoping that Gasol gets his minutes, and may the sphere be with you.
NBA Pick: Under 219.5 (–110) at Bovada
