The Golden State Warriors and San Antonio Spurs are seemingly on a crash course for one another in what should be an epic Western Conference Finals, but they still have two more meetings to settle in the next week and a half. The first of those games will come Thursday night in the second-to-last game of the regular season at Oracle Arena.
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SCHEDULING
The Dubs had to lose eventually at home, and they finally did so against the Celtics on Friday night. They fired back with a 25-point win over Portland on Sunday, and they'll get to play the Timberwolves at Oracle Arena on Tuesday before this one on Thursday.
San Antonio will play at Utah on Tuesday night before heading out to Oakland.
Live bettors though, will have to judge just how important this game is for either side. Golden State will have already wrapped up the No. 1 seed in the West, while San Antonio will already be locked in at No. 2 at that point.
It's commonplace for Gregg Popovich to not let his stars play in unimportant games, and we have a feeling he's set to rest the important players on Thursday night, but the same could be said for Golden State if Steve Kerr determines he wants to get Stephen Curry, Draymond Green and Klay Thompson a breather before the second season.
KEY MATCHUP
For the time being, we're going to have to go under the assumption that both teams are going to play this one all out, and as long as that's the case, the key is going to be how the Spurs defend against Curry and Thompson.
Obviously, those two men make up the best three-point shooting tandem in the league, and their toughest challenge is going to come against the lengthy and lanky Spurs. San Antonio holds teams down to just 33.1 percent from beyond the arc, the best mark in the Association.
Golden State did knock down 20 threes against the Celtics on Friday night, but we all saw what happened when it couldn't get its act together in that second quarter, in particular. If the Spurs take away the easy, uncontested outside shots, they'll have a real shot at becoming the second team to win a game in Oakland this year.
KEY STATS & TRENDS
The Spurs have taken it a little easy down the stretch of the season for obvious reasons. They're still winning games, but they're now on a stretch in which they're just 1-4 ATS, including failing to cover games at -13, -19 and -13.
Spreads like that are really tough to beat no matter who you are and who you're playing against, and live bettors are finding that out the hard way.
Golden State had failed to cover four games in a row at home before pummeling the Trail Blazers on Sunday night by 25. It had also notably pushed four straight games under the total before that, as the offense "only" scored 106, 103, 102 and 117 in those four games.
For a basketball team averaging 115.3 points per game, those are lousy stats.
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