NBA

Klay Thompson Helped the Warriors Win a Game They Should Have Lost Last Night

The Warriors run to 73 wins almost took a hit last night, until Thompson saved the day.

If sports have taught us anything, it's to expect the unexpected.

We here at numberFire have developed a way to monitor the expected, and if you're unfamiliar with it, it's called numberFire Live. Simply put, it weighs a variety of factors and determines the probability of each team to win a game in real-time.

In last night's matchup between the Golden State Warriors and the Utah Jazz, the Warriors saw their odds of winning the contest drop to just 11.78 percent after Klay Thompson missed a three-pointer with 20 seconds left in the fourth quarter. With almost a 90 percent chance of the Jazz winning the game, things seemed all but over, until a fortunate bounce on Thompson's miss ended up in teammate Shaun Livingston's hands.

Thompson's second attempt at a game-tying three found the back of the net and increased the Warrior's chances of winning by 29.1 percent. Despite the tie score, Utah still had almost a 60 percent chance of winning, as there were 15 seconds left in the game, an eternity to get a shot off. 

Things didn't go their way, however, as a block by Draymond Green and a Gordon Hayward miss in the closing seconds sent the game to overtime.

The two teams traded baskets for roughly the first three minutes of OT, before  Stephen Curry scored four straight points and drew a charging foul on Hayward. The next possession was a Curry-assisted dunk for Green to give the Warriors an insurmountable 8-point lead and increasing their chance of winning to 99.24 percent.

With wins like this, the Warriors seem destined to break the Chicago Bulls record of 72 wins in a season. (Our projections have them winning 72.6 games, so we expect them to at least tie the record.) 

When watching Golden State play, maybe we should expect the unexpected a little more than usual.