NBA Finals
With their season on the line, Miami came up big in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals against Indiana, but the San Antonio Spurs will present a very different challenge in the NBA Finals starting Thursday (June 6th).
LeBron James has been his usual dominating self throughout these playoffs but the contribution of Miami’s secondary stars is still the big x-factor ahead of the Finals. After Game 6 of the Conference Finals, James said he ‘went back to [my] Cleveland days’ as Wade and Bosh struggled, scoring just 10 and 6 points respectively. Dwayne Wade had a big game 7, but neither he nor Chris Bosh has been a consistent contributor in the postseason:
As you can see above, Bosh has now had four consecutive single-digit scoring games, and that simply won’t be enough for Miami to beat San Antonio. The Spurs defence is designed to protect the paint and contest threes. They’ll happily give up mid-range jump shots – the most inefficient shot in basketball – and this is where Miami has to take advantage. Bosh is one of the best mid-range shooters in the league and has to hit that shot consistently in these Finals. It was apparent in the conference finals that with Bosh struggling, Roy Hibbert was able to stay close to the basket and this made things much more difficult for Miami’s offense and Wade in particular. If Bosh can find his shooting form in the Finals, he’ll be able to draw Tim Duncan away from the rim and open things up for his teammates.
All in all, this is a much better match-up for the Heat than the one they’ve just faced. One of the main reasons they struggled against Indiana was rebounding. Miami ranked last in the league during the regular season in rebounding percentage at 49% but San Antonio wasn’t much better (in contrast with the Pacers, who led the league in this category). The Spurs do a lot of things well, but it’s hard to find any one area where they will dominate Miami and with LeBron having arguably having his best season so far, I think Miami will win the series in 6 or 7. Providing, that is, he gets a little scoring help from his teammates along the way.
On the betting front, I think there’s some value on the spreads for the series markets, where buying Miami at 5.5 to win in 6 games, or buying at 6 to win in 7 games could net you a decent return. The fixed odds sides of things is less appealing at this point as Miami have been odds on favourites for most of the season and the Spurs are not quite enough value at 2/1.
As for the individual game markets, San Antonio’s team points for game 1 are priced at 91-93 and I like the buy in this case as San Antonio has scored 93 or less just five times in their fourteen playoff games so far and averaged 103 per game during the regular season.
