Free Picks: Golden State Warriors vs. Utah Jazz

Alex Murray
By:
Alex Murray
05/11/2021
NBA Free Picks – Best Bets of the Week
Warriors vs Jazz NBA week 21
Golden State Warriors vs. Utah Jazz, NBA, Chase Center

The Utah Jazz will head down to the Bay for a visit with the Golden State Warriors at Chase Center on Monday night. The Jazz continue to maintain the best record in basketball, sitting at 50-18 as of this writing on Sunday evening. They ride a five-game winning streak into California and will be looking to put some more space between them and the second-place Phoenix Suns and possibly even clinch the top spot in the Western Conference early.

Warriors, Jazz Clash As Both Look To Cement Playoff Positioning (Season Betting Record: 95-104)

With two laughers to finish off the regular season against teams in the Oklahoma City Thunder and Sacramento Kings that would prefer to lose at this point in a season which has already been heavily tinged by tanking. Before that, the Jazz will have to overcome the Warriors on Monday as well as the Portland Trail Blazers on Wednesday if they expect to keep their vice grip on the top seed.

The Warriors, for their part,  are currently sitting in the 8th spot, four games behind the Blazers in sixth spot, 2.5 games behind the Los Angeles Lakers in seventh, half a game ahead of the ninth-place Memphis Grizzlies, 2.5 games ahead of the 10th place San Antonio Spurs, and 4.5 games ahead of the 11th place New Orleans Pelicans. In other words, with five games remaining, the Dubs seemingly have a lot more to play for than their opponents in San Francisco on Monday night. 

The Utah Jazz also continue to be without their best player and their starting point guard. The latter, veteran Mike Conley, has been dealing with tightness in his right hamstring and can be penciled in as a scratch for the eighth straight game. The former, fourth-year pro Donovan Mitchell, has missed the past dozen games for the Jazz, an absence which the team definitely cannot afford once the real playoffs start a couple of weeks from now.

He has been rehabbing an ankle sprain that looked pretty rough when he first suffered it a few weeks ago. Recently, the team announced he would remain out another seven days, to be re-evaluated after that… which is the exact same update they gave last week. While the Jazz are likely to hold onto the top seed in the tough Western Conference, going it without Spida is unlikely to produce the desired postseason results.

The team started off 3-4 without their top guy, but have since won five straight, one of which came on the back of a 48-point career-high outburst from Bojan Bogdanovic. It was an impressive display from the Croatian on Friday, but one that he is highly unlikely to replicate any time soon.

The 32-year-old went just 7-for-16 from the field on Saturday, so it seems his hot streak is already over. One scorching stretch of shooting that is showing no signs of slowing, however, belongs to a certain Bay Area Chef that plays for Bogdanovic’s Monday opponents and is a big reason that we’re going to make the Dubs our NBA pick here.

That would be Steph Curry, who somehow outdid himself with a 49-point, 11-triple performance on Saturday, capping off a week where he averaged 40.3 points per game on 50 percent shooting from the field and a 46 percent clip from deep. That was nothing but an extension of a much longer streak of shooting success from Northern California’s No. 1 chef. 

Since the start of April, Curry has been putting up 37.5 points per game—nearly six points more than the next best guy—on 51 percent shooting from the field and 46 from downtown. He has scored 30+ in 18 of 20 games over that span while his team went 12-8. When Curry scored 40+ Golden State was 6-1 during that time, with an 8-2 overall mark in those situations this season. 

Golden State has also been a great home team this season, going 21-11 at Chase, which ranks ninth in the NBA. The Jazz have a lot less to play for here, not to mention that arguably the MVP of the league is in the midst of one of the best shooting stretches of his illustrious career over on the other side. For those reasons, we like the Warriors’ underdog moneyline at beautiful +113 NBA odds as one of our best bets for today.

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Golden State Warriors Moneyline

Stats

  • Golden State has won 4 of their past 5 games
  • Golden State is 21-11 SU at home this season, 9th in the NBA
  • Golden State is 8-2 SU when Steph Curry scores 40+ points this season
  • Golden State is 26-15 SU when playing on 1 days’ rest this season

Alex is an alumnus of Ryerson University's RTA Sport Media program, a contributing NHL, NBA, and MLB writer in the BetPicks.ca team. He has been writing on sports, betting, and fantasy contests for several years, including pitstops as an NFL Editor for theScore and as one of the lead NBA news writers for fantasy sports site FantasyPros. As a lifelong athlete, bettor, and sports fan, Alex is uniquely qualified to help you reach the sports betting success that you've always dreamed of and your wife never believed you could achieve.