Cleveland Cavaliers @ Golden State Warriors -8 (-102)
Oracle Arena, Oakland, California
January 16, 2017, 5:00PM PST
Our sim work likes the Warriors to avenge the recent string of ATS losses to the World Champion Cleveland Cavaliers this afternoon.
Coming into the the Christmas day match-up (the last meeting between these teams), Cleveland had been playing very consistent, high-level basketball. The Cavs had racked up nine straight up wins and eight covers in their last ten through December 24. However, Cleveland has collected only two covers in their most recent ten games. Further, the current soft patch includes outright losses to Portland, Utah, Chicago and Detroit. Thus, it appears as though this is not quite the same team that swaggered into Oakland last month and pulled off the upset as 3.5 point underdogs.
We think it highly likely that the Cavs will play intense, competitive basketball this afternoon, perhaps spurred by the observation that despite beating the Warriors soundly in the Finals last year, and building on that work last month, Golden State is still favored to win not only today's match-up, but also the title (as of the time of this writing, Bovada reports the odds of Golden State going all the way as -125, versus +230 for the Cavaliers). However, we are confident that Warriors have the talent to handily beat any team on a given night. If nothing else, we expect pride to propel the uber-talented Warriors to the level of mental acuity needed to secure the cover this evening.
Happy betting!!