Free Picks: Golden State Warriors vs. Dallas Mavericks

The Dallas Mavericks head to the San Francisco Bay to take on the Golden State Warriors and their piping hot Chef, Steph Curry. The Warriors are coming into this clash looking to extend their winning streak to three games, with their last game resulting in a tight win over the woeful Sacramento Kings. The Mavericks, for their part, took on the Kings in their last outing as well, though they didn’t have as much luck in that matchup as the Dubs.

To be fair, the Mavericks were missing a few important players on Monday night, including Kristpas Porzingis, who is expected to play on Tuesday. Dallas was playing from behind all night on Monday, making several runs to keep it close with the Kings but falling short in a 113-106 loss in the end. As any player can attest to, playing from behind takes a lot more energy than cooling off with a big lead.

Doubtless, Dallas head coach Rick Carlisle had been hoping for his squad to jump out to a big lead so he could rest his big guns for Tuesday night’s much more important meeting with the Warriors. But alas, Luka Doncic was in the game until the bitter end. The Slovenian ended up playing 38 frustrating minutes on the night, just a game after he played 39 minutes in a win over the Lakers on Saturday.

Those 77 minutes represent Doncic’s largest two-game minute total in over five weeks, which doesn’t bode well for his motor going into the later stages of Tuesday night’s game against Golden State, a team that just so happens to play at a 102.94 PACE, second-fastest in the league this season.

Without Josh Richardson in there, who’s expected to miss the game with a hamstring issue, it’s going to be some combo of Donic and diminutive backups Jalen Brunson and Trey Burke defending Steph Curry, which is bad news for the Mavs. The veteran J.J. Redick, who should be available, isn’t much of a defender in the backcourt either, so unless Dorian Finney-Smith moves off the three position to guard Curry at the one—which seems unlikely—Dallas is in real trouble.

Golden State will be the extremely slight favorites for this one, which works in their favor: they’re 18-7 SU as the favorite, 19-10 SU as the home team, and 11-3 SU as the home favorite so far this season. They’ve also been excellent playing on a regular, one-day-off schedule, going 22-13 SU in those situations this year. Not to mention that the Warriors also enter Tuesday’s game having won their last five straight against Western Conference opponents.

This is all before talking about how Curry has been on an absolute mission in April, averaging 38.1 points in 13 games this month. Considering this one’s basically a toss up, we’re going to give the Dubs getting the slight edge and take the Golden State moneyline at lovely -111 NBA odds as one of our top picks for this compact Tuesday night NBA slate.

Another NBA pick we really like for this tilt is on the aforementioned Curry, who has been shooting the ball like we’ve never seen it be shot before over the past 30 days or so. In April, Chef Steph has topped 50 points once, 40 points another four times, and gone above 30 in seven other games. The guy only scored less than 32 points once all month while averaging 6.5 triples a game on ridiculous 47 percent efficiency from downtown.

With the amount of ground Curry covers over the course of a game running and cutting without the ball—which he does better than perhaps anyone in the league—that tuckered out Dallas backcourt is going to have some struggles keeping up. Dallas is also one of five teams against whom Curry has averaged 40+ over multiple matchups this season, scoring 28 and 57 points in back-to-back tilts in February.

We expect the Chef to keep cooking up the best of the best and continue this red-hot run, so we like the over on his 34.5 points prop at tasty -110 NBA odds as one of our best bets for today. That number may continue to rise leading up to game time, but it offers value as long as it stays under 35.

• Dallas is 4-0 ATS in the last 4 meetings in Golden State
• Dallas is 1-6 ATS in their last 7 Tuesday games
• Golden State has won 5 straight games against the Western Conference
• Steph Curry has averaged 38.1 points in the month of April