Expert NBA Free Pick: Utah Jazz vs. Golden State Warriors

Is Utah in some trouble right now? It had lost six straight games before beating the lowly Minnesota Timberwolves on Friday night at home, and it had to do that without superstar Deron Williams in the lineup. Williams is nursing a sore wrist, and it is unknown whether he is going to be giving it a go on Sunday night or not. If he is out of the fold, the Jazz are losing really their only tremendous option at guard, as well as their team’s leading scorer at 21.9 points per game, and their leading assist man at 9.4 per game. Paul Millsap picked up the slack for the absent Williams on Friday night, scoring 30 points and dragging down eight boards, while Andrei Kirilenko had one of his best games of the year, scoring 27 points, dishing out seven assists, and pulling in six rebounds. The problem is the guard play beyond Williams. Raja Bell, Earl Watson, CJ Miles, Ronnie Price, Gordon Hayward… who are these guys? These are the men trying to replace an absolute stud, and it just isn’t going to work on a regular basis, especially against a guard heavy team like the Warriors.

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Golden State might not be able to stop a D-League team from scoring, but one thing is for certain, and that’s that there is no lack of firepower offensively on this club. They shoot 39.9 percent from beyond the arc, ranking No. 1 in the league, and there is definitely no shortage of players that are willing to pull the trigger. Of course, Monta Ellis and Stephen Curry seemingly take 100% of the shots for this team, as the two never saw a look at the basket that they didn’t like. Ellis is averaging 25.7 points per game to lead the team, while Curry is at 18.9 points per game. Dorrell Wright and David Lee are both averaging at least 16.1 points per game as well, making this one of the two clubs in the league that can boast that it has four 16+ point per game scorers. The Warriors have lost four in a row though, and this is really bad news for a team that has only played one road game since January 9th, and it wouldn’t have left the state of California at any point from January 5th through February 10th… and even then, there will only be three total games outside of the state until February 27th.

We just can’t force ourselves into taking the Jazz, though. Utah has a size advantage against every team in the league pretty much, and this won’t be an exception. These guards are just too strong for the Warriors, though. Wright, Curry, and Ellis should dominate this game, and Golden State should get back in the win column.