The last time the Cleveland Cavaliers took the floor at Rocket Arena, it ended in heartbreak, as the Indiana Pacers erased a seven-point deficit with under a minute to take a shocking 2-0 series lead.
But that was two games ago, and a lot has changed since. Cleveland looked to have righted the ship in Game 3, pulling out a 126-104 victory, but Game 4 was an unmitigated disaster for the Cavaliers. They trailed by 41 points at halftime, making just eight shots in the first half, before Donovan Mitchell left with an ankle injury, putting his status for Game 5 in question. Now, Cleveland trails 3-1, and unlike in the 2016 Finals, it doesn’t have LeBron James on its roster.
Still, the Cavaliers are 7.5-point favorites at DraftKings Sportsbook (-290 Moneyline), with the point total set to 230. Meanwhile, Indiana is +235 on the Moneyline.
Betting Splits
Although Darius Garland expressed confidence about Cleveland’s ability to come back, the public isn’t so gung-ho. Despite being significant underdogs, the Pacers have garnered 64% of the bets and 60% of the handle. Given the Cavaliers’ inability to stop Tyrese Haliburton as a playmaker, it’s hard to blame bettors for being so confident in the visitors. Indiana has shot 50.4% from the field this series and 41.9% from beyond the arc, both of which are more than four percentage points higher than the next-best team, largely because of Haliburton’s ability to manipulate the defense. The Pacers’ chances would also improve dramatically if Mitchell is out or limited, given that he’s scored 33 or more points in each of the games he’s finished.
Unsurprisingly, bettors are even more confident in Indiana’s chances against the spread, which the Pacers have covered in each of their wins. 74% of all bets have come in on Indiana to either win or lose by fewer than seven points, and while there are a few big-money bettors backing Cleveland to have a bounce-back performance, 68% of the handle is still on the Pacers. It’s worth noting that the Cavaliers were the second best team against the spread in the regular season, going 48-33-1, while Indiana was just 36-44-2.
The public is also narrowly backing the game to be high-scoring, with 62% of all bets and 57% of the handle coming in on the game total to go over 230 points. These two teams have been the highest-scoring in the second round thus far, and three of the first four games of the series went over, as well as the closeout games of each team’s first round series. During the regular season, the over went 50-32 in Cleveland’s games, the best record in the league, and 44-37-1 in the Pacers’.
Most Popular Player Props
Here are the top five most-bet player props for tonight’s game:
- Tyrese Haliburton 9+ Rebounds (+550)
- Tyrese Haliburton U8.5 Assists (-110)
- Donovan Mitchell 30+ Points (+130)
- Obi Toppin Under 8.5 Points (-135)
- Evan Mobley Under 10.5 Rebounds (-115)
Given bettors’ overall confidence in Indiana, it’s not a surprise that Haliburton is the focus of the public’s two most popular prop bets. The rebounding line is particularly interesting, given that he’s only recorded nine or more boards twice in his 24 career playoff games. One of those nine-board efforts, however, came in Game 2, when his offensive rebound in the dying seconds set him up for the now-famous dagger that he hit from the top of the key. He has averaged 7.7 rebound chances per game this series, up from 5.8 in the regular season, and very few have been contested, so if he gets a few lucky bounces tonight, it’s possible. As a silver lining for Cavaliers fans, Haliburton has also recorded five or fewer assists in each of the past three games and has averaged just 11.0 potential assists per game over that span, thanks to some pretty solid defense by Max Strus.
The public is also fading big men from both teams. Toppin has only scored more than eight points once this series, when he dropped 20 in the Game 4 blowout, and he’ll be unlikely to play more than 20 minutes if the game is tight down the stretch. Otherwise, he’s been relatively stifled this series, shooting one-for-six from the field against Ty Jerome and three-for-seven against Mobley, although it’s been largely a function of shooting luck. Still, he and Myles Turner have held down the paint well enough, limiting Mobley to fewer than 11 rebounds in two of the three games in which he has appeared. The Pacers have boxed out 3.5 more times per game than Cleveland has, and among the 21 players to average nine or more rebounds per game in the regular season, Mobley ranked merely near the middle of the pack in contested rebounding percentage.
The safest bet among the five most popular is for Mitchell to score more than 30 points, something that he’s done in each of the five games these playoffs in which he’s played more than 30 minutes. For his playoff career, Mitchell averages 28.2 points per game, the seventh-highest average in NBA history, and he’s posting the third-highest usage rate of his career so far these playoffs. His scoring outbursts are more a product of his league-high usage than his efficiency, making them fairly sustainable; if anything, he should’ve scored more, given that he’s made just eight of his 28 open or wide-open three-pointers.
