It’s hard to say which team has been the most disappointing this season. The Phoenix Suns fell to Houston to open the month of December and things have gotten worse. They won just five of 19 games over the last six weeks falling to .500 for the first time since they were 1-1 with a loss to Miami, their fifth straight.
The Suns have already lost more games this season than they did all of last year when they had the NBA’s best record. Phoenix looks to break out of its slumber with a visit to the defending champion Golden State Warriors on Tuesday. The Warriors had been nearly unbeatable at home until back to back losses to Detroit and Orlando.
The matchup between the Suns and Warriors takes place on Tuesday, January 10, 2023 and will air live on TNT with tip off at 10 p.m. ET from Chase Center in San Francisco. BookMaker.eu will have betting options for every game on the NBA schedule.
Suns vs GSW Warriors
Phoenix Suns (Check Back Later)
Golden State Warriors (Check Back Later)
Total (Check Back Later)
Season to Date
The season started like the Suns and most around the league expected. There were few changes to the team that reached the NBA Finals two years ago and posted the best record in the league last season. So it wasn’t a complete surprise when they ended November with a win over Chicago, their sixth straight, giving them a 15-6 SU and 13-8 ATS record. Injuries to key players, and a lot of them, finally caught up with the Suns, though. Chris Paul missed about a month of the season and soon after he returned leading scorer Devin Booker went on the shelf. Booker is expected out a few more weeks and things got ugly last week in a loss to Miami when Paul sustained a hip injury joining Cam Johnson and Cam Payne on the sideline.
The Suns will get no sympathy from the Warriors regarding injuries. Steph Curry is the biggest name on the list with a few more games before he’s ready to return while a number of other key players missed time. Even when Curry was playing the Dubs struggled on the road owning the worst record in the NBA. They were able to stay around .500 thanks to a dominant home record that had them at 17-2 SU and 14-4-1 ATS before back-to-back losses to Detroit and Orlando. Two of the worst teams in the East both swept the season series.
Phoenix Suns
The good news is that the Suns will get all of their injured players back at some point. The bad news is that they’ll have to navigate a stretch without them. They managed to go 9-5 when Paul was out of the lineup leaning on Booker during that stretch. Nobody has picked up the slack with Booker out. It’s hard to find continuity with a lineup constantly in flux. Only Mikal Bridges and reserve Damion Lee have played every game. Booker is a big loss and his absence has been felt. He was injured in a loss to Denver on Christmas Day and the Suns are 1-5 SU and 2-4 ATS in six games since.
Booker is the team’s leading scorer at 27.1 points per games, which is nearly 10 points more on average than the second highest scorer. And the Suns have been unable to find offense in his absence. Their 104-96 loss to Miami was the third straight game with fewer than 100 points with the team averaging just 94.6 points during a five-game winless skid. The Suns cashed the UNDER in four of those games.
Golden State Warriors
You can sum up Golden State’s road woes by looking at the first two games of the season series. They lost to the Suns 134-105 in late October and were handed a 130-119 loss about three weeks later. The Suns earned payouts in both while cashing the OVER. And that’s kinda how it’s been for the Dubs. They are a different club at Chase Center, though. Despite recent setbacks to Detroit and Orlando, the Warriors have the most home wins of any Western Conference team and the second most in the NBA while owning the second-best cover rate at 70 percent.
The Warriors dropped to .500 with their loss to Orlando, and while they did welcome back Andrew Wiggins following a 15-game absence, Klay Thompson sat with a sore knee. It was more of a precautionary move and Thompson is expected back in the lineup. In three games prior to the Orlando matchup, Thompson averaged 38.3 points while shooting 51.2 percent from the floor. He scored 54 points on 21 of 39 shooting, including 10 of 21 from behind the arc, in a win over Atlanta last week.
Suns vs Warriors Prediction
The Suns have had the better of the season series winning two games by an average of 20 points. That was before the club was decimated by injuries and the games were in Phoenix. The Warriors are better defensively at home allowing around 13 fewer points per game than they do on the road. And Phoenix is short a few rounds in the chamber with Booker shelved.
Our Prediction: Golden State Warriors and UNDER
