Playoffs 1-4 (-3.4)
Friday, April 26
Third time's a charm.
The Nuggets have easily been outplayed in the first two games, but they are still the far superior team in this series, and tonight they will be the aggressors, after being embarrassed on their home floor. How unusual was the Warrior's performance in the last game? Only 19 teams in the past 25 playoff seasons have shot better than 60% from the floor. Teams have a stellar ATS record (75.8%) and a SU winning record when playing on the road against an opponent they allowed to shoot over 60% in the last match up on their home floor.
In order to really break down a game, you can?t rely purely on a glance at the box score, but have to really delve into it and see what happened. At a glance, it appears to be domination by the Warriors in the last game. More points, more rebounds, better field goal percentage. It would probably be hard to believe that the Nuggets actually had a possession margin advantage of seven in that game. The only thing the Warriors dominated was their ability to shoot, really really really well. Rebounding margin is a bunch of crap - if you maintain the possession margin in other ways (for the best example, reference the Miami Heat all season). The Warriors ppp was 1.32, which gives them an offensive efficiency rating of 131.7 for the game (an increase of over 25 above their season average), while the Nuggets scored just under their efficiency rating for the season. If the Warriors had scored at their average efficiency level, they would have scored 106 points, and the Nuggets win by eleven. Even if we split the difference and give them a great game, it would have been a one point game. The point of all this is that I just don?t think it is going to happen again! It was an unbelievable performance, but not a sustainable one.
Over the last ten seasons, 3 seeds have the best record of any seeds when playing in the third game of a series after a loss. They win these games 79% of the time.
Nuggets +1 x2
Good luck...
