With a 117-115 win over the Memphis Grizzlies on Saturday, the West’s No. 1 seed, the Oklahoma City Thunder, secured a 4-0 sweep in the first round of the playoffs. Tonight, their Eastern counterpart, the Cleveland Cavaliers, will seek to join them and dispatch the Miami Heat. Cleveland made light work of the regular season, winning 64 games, and it has not disappointed in the first round, either, winning each of the series’ first three games in fairly comfortable fashion.
Given what we’ve seen from these two teams so far, it’s highly likely that the Cavaliers punch their ticket to the second round this evening, even with point guard Darius Garland questionable with a toe injury.
At DraftKings Sportsbook, Cleveland is an 8.5-point favorite (-375 on the Moneyline), with the point total set to 211. Meanwhile, the Heat are +295 on the Moneyline.
Betting Splits
Even the possibility of a 295% profit isn’t swaying bettors away from backing the Cavaliers, as a whopping 88% of all bets and 87% of the handle have come in on Cleveland to close the series out tonight. With Sam Merrill in the starting lineup in place of Garland on Saturday, it would’ve seemed like Miami’s best opportunity to pull one back, but the Cavaliers still ran away with it, winning each quarter and finishing with a plus-seven turnover differential. With the exception of a second-half rally in Game 2, the Heat haven’t really looked in the same league as Cleveland, and between the regular season and playoffs, the Cavaliers are now up 5-1 in the season series.
Bettors are also expecting Cleveland to not only win, but to win big, with 70% of all bets and 79% of the handle coming in on the Cavaliers to prevail by at least nine points, something that they did 43 times during the regular season and in each of the three games of the series so far. Throughout the regular season, Cleveland went 48-33-1 against the spread, the second-best record in the league, while Miami was a more pedestrian 38-42-2. The Cavaliers covered the spread in Games 1 and 3, while the Heat covered it in Game 2. Big-money bettors are even more confident than than the average bettor that Cleveland will close it out in style, given the nine-percentage-point discrepancy between the bets and the handle.
The public is also high on the offenses to win out, which, given that the Cavaliers had the league’s best offense in the regular season and tops it in the playoffs, is a fair bet. The over went 50-32 in Cleveland’s regular-season games and 44-38 in Miami’s, both of which ranked in the league’s top five, and both Games 1 and 2 went over the total before Game 3 fell under. But Game 3 saw nearly a full quarter of garbage time and Tyler Herro and Donovan Mitchell combined to shoot just nine-for-27 from the field, so it’s reasonable to expect a bounce-back for the bucket-getters tonight.
Most Popular Player Props
Here are the top five most-bet player props for tonight’s game:
- Donovan Mitchell 1st Points Scorer (+475)
- Davion Mitchell Under 6.5 Assists (-110)
- Davion Mitchell Over 18.5 Points + Assists (-135)
- Tyler Herro 7+ Three-Pointers Made (+2000)
- Bam Adebayo Over 10.5 Rebounds (-105)
Four of the five most-bet player props are on Heat players, although bettors aren’t super confident that Davion Mitchell will be much of a playmaker tonight. He’s dished out six or fewer assists in each of his last two games after getting added to the starting lineup, and the Cavaliers allowed the eighth-fewest assists per game in the regular season, so he does face a tough road to getting to that number. In Game 1, Mitchell turned 20 potential assists into nine dimes, but since then, his potential assists dropped to 16.5 per game in Games 2 and 3.
Bettors are big on Mitchell, still, given that he’ll likely receive a heavy dose of minutes as the primary defender on Donovan Mitchell. In 16 minutes of total matchup time across the first three games, Donovan Mitchell shot five-for-18 from the field and four-for-10 from deep, dishing out one assist and coughing up one turnover, which, given that he ranks ninth in NBA history in playoff scoring average, is pretty poor. Davion Mitchell, meanwhile, has averaged 17.3 points and 6.7 dimes per game, reaching the 19 P/A threshold in each of the first three games while shooting 68.8% from the field and 66.7% from deep. Donovan Mitchell also hasn’t scored the first bucket in any of the three games and ranks just second on Cleveland in first-quarter usage rate and fourth in first-quarter scoring.
The biggest long-shot among the five most popular prop bets, though, is for Herro to set a new playoff career high by draining seven three-pointers, and to be fair, Miami might need seven triples from the first-time All-Star if it wants to keep its season alive. He reached that number six times during the regular season, although the Heat went just 2-4 in those games. 48.6% of his shot attempts came from beyond the arc in the regular season, but the Cavaliers have done a great job forcing him into less efficient looks, as just 36.4% of his shots have come from deep so far in the series.
The public is also high on Adebayo to control the glass and record 11 or more rebounds. He’s done so once this series, snagging 14 total boards (five offensive) in Game 2, and could be poised to again take advantage of Cleveland, whose one weakness this season was allowing the ninth-most offensive rebounds in the league. But the Cavaliers have been excellent at controlling the defensive glass so far, allowing the fewest defensive and total boards of any team so far these playoffs. Adebayo did record two 11-plus-board games against Cleveland during the regular season, nabbing 10 or more defensive rebounds in each game.
