Welcome to the Winner’s Circle, a weekly column by Bet For The Win senior writer Prince J. Grimes. Here, you’ll read about stats and trends that can help you make informed betting predictions for the week ahead and beyond.
The Golden State Warriors are -150 favorites over the Boston Celtics in the NBA Finals, but they certainly didn’t feel like the better team as the regular season was nearing a close. So what’s led to Golden State’s about-face in the playoffs? Well, for one, they’re finally whole. But in a strange way, Marcus Smart might have also helped them get here. Let me explain.
While the Celtics were busy winning 17 of their final 22 games after the All-Star Break – continuing a push that saw them go from 10th place in January to second in the East – the Warriors were going in the opposite direction and suddenly losing more than they were winning. Draymond Green was nursing a back injury. And though Klay Thompson had returned just as Green went down, he needed to knock off the rust from not playing in more than two years.
Despite the best efforts of Stephen Curry, the Warriors lost nine of 11 games from Feb. 9 to March 7 and were knocked out of the West’s top two for the first time all season. Curry’s workload appeared to be taking a toll, as his 3-point shooting was well below his career average of 43%. He finished the season at a career-low 38%, including 34% in January and February.
Rest was top of mind for head coach Steve Kerr, even as the Warriors carried a five-game losing streak into March. He sat several key players for the last of those games, a rescheduled meeting with the Denver Nuggets from earlier in the season.
“The decision was pretty easy,” Kerr said at the time. “Throwing that game into the schedule the way they did after the game was postponed. Three games in four nights, two of those games in Denver going back-and-forth, we’re not going to put our high-minutes guys at risk.”
This is where Smart comes in. After that rest game, the Warriors went on a four-game winning streak leading into their meeting with the Celtics on March 16. Green had returned to the lineup in the game prior, Thompson had a season-high 38 points two games prior, and the team appeared to finally be rounding into shape. But Curry was still hot and cold while averaging his most minutes per game since 2013-14. Against the Celtics, he was 1-of-4 from the field with four turnovers before Smart collided into Curry while reaching for a loose ball. It left the former MVP with a foot injury that kept him from playing for a month.
Steph came up limping after fighting for a loose ball pic.twitter.com/hOjIvE2f8k
— Warriors on NBCS (@NBCSWarriors) March 17, 2022
So how exactly did that help Curry and the Warriors? It forced Golden State to rest its best player, who now might be the freshest high-minutes player in the NBA Finals. Curry has played just 16 games since March 16, while most other starters are well over 20. Some Celtics have played 14 games in just their last two playoff series, with both going to a Game 7. The players who haven’t, like Smart and Robert Williams, are banged up.
Curry’s injury also thrust Jordan Poole into a bigger role, as he averaged 26 points after Curry went down and remained in the starting lineup for their first-round series against the Denver Nuggets. Now, he’s key to the Warriors’ chances to knock off the Celtics and a little more prepared to handle that responsibility.
At the time of the injury, it felt like more gloom for the skidding Warriors. In hindsight, maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing after all. They still managed to finish the regular season with a better record than Boston, they’ve had a much easier time getting to the Finals, and now they’re favored to win it all. I think they will. And in the end, Curry might end up as the MVP.
