Steph Curry will not play when the Golden State Warriors face the Los Angeles Clippers on Sunday night, and that changes the whole shape of the game before tipoff. Draymond Green is also out, leaving Golden State short on the two players who have driven so much of its offense and organization this season.
The game is scheduled for 8:30 p.m. ET at Chase Center, which is why bettors are paying close attention to a matchup that opened with the Warriors as 2.5-point favorites. That line is hard to ignore when the team is missing Curry and Green, especially with the Warriors coming in on a three-game winning streak and the Clippers off to a 1-4 start.
Brandin Podziemski has become one of the clearest clues to how Golden State tries to patch the gap. He has recorded five or more assists in three straight games, and that matters now because Curry and Green are combining for 11.2 assists per game this season. Without them, the Warriors need the ball to move through other hands, and Podziemski is the most obvious replacement for that passing load in this matchup.
The numbers still point to a difficult game for the visitors. Golden State was 13-26 straight up without Curry last season, and the Clippers have held three of their first five opponents under 110 points while averaging 105.4 points per game, the second-lowest mark in the NBA. They have also won eight of the past 10 meetings between these teams, and they went 14-10 against the spread as a road underdog last year.
That is why the Under is drawing support here. With Curry unavailable, Green out, and both teams carrying recent signs of scoring trouble, the game has the profile of a slower, tighter contest than the spread suggests. The closer this one gets to the rim, the more Golden State has to prove it can replace what Curry creates without forcing the pace into a game it no longer controls.
