Betting the Warriors success ports to Ball Arena: Golden State -1.5

We (rightly) picked the Golden State Warriors to cover game 2 versus the Denver Nuggets at the Chase Center Monday, from the position of seven-point favorites. We like the Dubs to continue their roll Thursday, as slight favorites in Denver. We cite the following historical tendencies as support for our thinking...

Favored teams on straight up win streaks of three games or more have proven solid playoff bets in action featuring squads that both participated in the previous year's postseason.

After winning and covering the first two contests of the round one series with the Nuggets, the Warriors have strung together seven consecutive straight up victories.

Golden State's playoff ambitions were dashed last year though after falling to the Lakers in the Play-In Tournament. By our reckoning this action qualifies as a postseason appearance. As such, a play on Golden State is triggered, per this system.

(The Nuggets entered the 2020-21 postseason in the #3 spot, but were swept by the #2 Suns in the Western Conference Semifinals.)

This angle has delivered a statistically significant 20% return on investment back to the 2005-06 season, including accurately calling for Warriors' covers in game 1 and game 2 of this series.

Separately, home teams taking points following underdog losses have proven strong fades in the playoffs.

Denver is currently slated as 1.5-point underdogs for game 3, after losing 106-126 in San Francisco Monday.

This latter system has submitted a 15% historical ROI (also statistically significant), and is 2-1 ATS so far this season.

For Nuggets fans, we detailed in our writeup for game 3 of the Sixers / Raptors series that teams down 0-2 tend to come out guns-a-blazing in the third contest. This effort is commonly good for the first half cover, but better teams (i.e. favorites) tend to assert themselves by the final whistle.

Squads have delivered a 21% ROI versus the first half number since 2004-05 after falling behind 0-2 in postseason match-ups (though such teams have 'only' been good for 15% in the first round).

Thus, bettors inclined to back Denver should consider Nuggets -0.5 1H (to be clear though, our preferred play is on the Warriors to cover the full game chalk).

Happy betting!!