Los Angeles Clippers – Minnesota Timberwolves PREDICTION (20.01.2017)

Los Angeles Clippers and Minnesota Timberwolves will meet Friday, January 20, in a match of the regular season NBA.

Los Angeles Clippers (4th place in the Western Conference)

The team coached by Doc Rivers has been considered in recent years one of the great strengths of the NBA. However, always appeared a big performance obstacle that the club owned by Steve Ballmer never managed to overcome it. Griffin, Paul, DeAndre Reddick and they could have a go on the Clippers for the first time since its foundation in a conference final, stopping the last 5 years with no more than a step forward.

Clippers fans hopes were high in the previous season. Unfortunately for them, the old curse occurred then, Chris Paul had to be carried in the first match of the play-off match in the company of the Trail Blazers. Lillard never took pity and I pulled out of the race Californians, despite the fact that Portland clearly proceeded with the second chance.

Blake and Chris, the two biggest celebrities Clippers roster, if they subscribed to surgery, undergoing serious surgery each year. Inevitably, LAC was not able to find solutions that compensate for the absence of two amazing basketball players, seeing their dreams dashed season after season.

History repeats itself! His knee Griffin had been subjected to interventions in mid-December (absent all this time), and Paul was operated ago shortly ligaments thumb of his left hand, and will stay away from basketball between 6 and 8 weeks. Point Guard had another medical problem in the end of 2016 which allowed him not to play.

Clippers results in the simultaneous absence of the two this season: 6 defeats in a row!

The results of the last two seasons with the Clippers Chris Paul on the floor: 79 wins – 35 losses
The results of the last two seasons Clippers without Chris Paul: 5 wins – 12 losses

Griffin’s absence can be compensated. Sure, she sees when LAC moves against large forces, but is doing against weaker teams listed. Instead, when CP3 can not play, the figures show that the situation is really disastrous. And he will not be in dispute with Wolves currently scheduled for a few hours.

Minnesota Timberwolves (13th place in the Western Conference)

Minneapolis band is still very inconsistent, especially on the end of matches, when all the work in the first part is simply thrown in the trash. This scenario was confirmed in the last round, when Wolves after playing fantastic in the first two quarters against the Spurs (scoring no less than 71 points !!), I managed to May bill much after the break.

As we mentioned in our previous meeting with Ricky Rubio and the company, the Timberwolves have a lot of extremely talented young basketball players will have in the future a word to say. Also, this season is coached by Tom Thibodeau, who were unable to qualify for the Bulls 5 times in a row in the playoffs. However, something still works as it should. Maybe the culprit is the average age low, perhaps ideas that focus on a Defense extremely careful of the new coach are still not treated properly, the fact is that Minnesota fails to confirm the opinion of specialists who believed in summer as accession play-off is more manageable than ever (Wolves never finished in the top 8 teams in the West since 2004).

Of course, as befits a talented bands, but bohemian, Wolves matches sometimes do extremely solid. That was happened last week when “Wolves” have checked three consecutive successes in the face of very troublesome opponents: 101-92 vs. Mavericks, 119-115 vs. James Harden & Houston Rockets and 96-86 vs. Russell Westbrook & OKC.

Direct Meetings

Interestingly, the last official dispute directly with the role of host Clippers was completed with victory for the Timberwolves (108-102 on 04/02/16). Chris Paul played in that match.

The two met in the current season, winning LAC in Minneapolis by a score of 119-105.

Clippers starters: PG – Austin Rivers / SG – J.J. Redick / SF – Wesley Johnson / PF – Mbah a MOUT / C – DeAndre Jordan

Wolves starters: PG – Ricky Rubio / SG – Zach Lavine / SF – Andrew Wiggins / PF – Gorgui Dieng / C – Karl Anthony Towns