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Warriors, Blazers meet in Portland on Tuesday
By: Zach Cohen - StatFox
Published: 10/31/2016  at  8:45:00 PM
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GOLDEN STATE WARRIORS (2-1)

at PORTLAND TRAIL BLAZERS (2-1)

Tip-off: Tuesday, 10:05 p.m. ET
Line: Golden State -5.0, Total: 228.0

The Warriors will be looking to win their third straight game when they face the Blazers on Tuesday.

Almost everybody in the world knows that the Warriors lost their season opener to the Spurs, but Golden State has rebounded from that embarrassing defeat. The team has now won two straight games, as the Warriors beat the Pelicans 122-114 as 12.5-point road favorites on Oct. 28 and followed it up with a 106-100 win as 11.5-point favorites in Phoenix on Sunday. One issue that sticks out when looking at the team’s start has been the shooting. The Warriors have hit less than 35% of their threes in each of their three games this season and that is just not something that is going to keep up. Look for them to get hot in this one, as the Blazers have allowed 110.3 PPG through three games this season. Portland has won-and-covered in two of those three contests, though, and should be feeling confident heading into this one. The Warriors, however, defeated the Blazers in the postseason last year and they know what it takes to beat this Portland team. That series victory was with PG Stephen Curry (25.7 PPG, 4.7 APG) playing on an injured knee, so they probably feel that they can blow out this Blazers team with Curry near 100%.

The Warriors are 2-1, but things haven’t looked great for them just yet. They’ll need a big time performance soon and Tuesday presents a good opportunity for them to turn that in. Curry seems like the guy that could really go off in this one. In the last two games against the Blazers in last year’s playoff series, Curry averaged 34.5 PPG and 9.5 APG. Look for him to take his matchup with Lillard personally and expect him to put up some huge numbers. SF Kevin Durant (31.3 PPG, 10.3 RPG, 2.7 SPG, 1.7 BPG), however, has been the Warriors’ best player thus far. Durant has been everything Golden State thought he would be, as he is averaging over 30 points per game and is doing so on just 17.7 field goal attempts per contest. Portland is weakest at the small forward position, so Durant should be able to have no trouble scoring in this one either. The x-factor in this game will be SG Klay Thompson (17.7 PPG), though. Thompson has not shot the ball well this season, as he is hitting just 14.3% of his threes and has attempted seven per game. If he does not find his stroke soon then the Warriors might continue to have trouble winning games.

The Blazers are off to a good start and a lot of that has to do with the play of PG Damian Lillard (35.0 PPG, 8.0 RPG, 5.3 APG, 1.0 SPG). Lillard has been unstoppable early on, as he is shooting 54.9% from the floor and 44.4% from three through three games. He also happened to have hit the game-winning floater to beat the Nuggets on Saturday night. Lillard likes to play against this Warriors team so look for him to be aggressive in his matchup with Steph Curry on Tuesday. Portland, however, will need SG C.J. McCollum (21.3 PPG, 5.3 RPG, 2.3 SPG) to play very well in this one. McCollum has a tough matchup with Thompson in this game and the Blazers really need him to win that one in order for them to pull off the upset in this game. He is going to be going up against Thompson at the right time, though, as he is clearly struggling to adjust to life with Kevin Durant thus far.


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