NBA Betting Guide for Saturday 5/27/23: Can the Heat End the Series Before a Dangerous Trip Back to Boston?
Betting on the NBA can get a little overwhelming throughout the season because there are games every day, and there's just a lot to track throughout the season and entering every night -- spreads, over/unders, injuries, and so on.
But you can rely on numberFire to help. We have a detailed betting algorithm that projects out games to see how often specific betting lines hit. You can also track spread bet percentages at FanDuel Sportsbook.
Where can we identify value in tonight's NBA odds?
(All offensive, defensive, and net rating splits come from PBPStats.com and account for medium-, high-, and very high-leverage situations unless otherwise noted. Unless otherwise noted, all injury news and notes come from the official NBA injury report.)
Boston Celtics at Miami Heat
Boston Celtics ML (-145)
This could be a legendary middle when looking at the betting activity.
On a crucial number of 3.0 points, a majority of bets and cash are on the Celtics to cover the spread. However, an even larger percentage of the moneyline's tickets and handle lie with the Miami Heat. Casinos aren't built on losses, so I am laying juice to avoid a whopping win for sportsbooks in the middle.
I still do like the Celtics to win this game. They've become the juggernaut we expected when they opened this series at -550 on FanDuel, largely evening up Basketball Reference's Four Factors despite the slow start:
| Team | Pace | eFG% | TOV% | ORB% | FT/FGA | ORtg | PTS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BOS (2-3) | 93.1 | 0.555 | 12.0 | 26.3 | 0.195 | 117.9 | 109.8 |
| MIA (3-2) | 93.1 | 0.576 | 12.0 | 21.8 | 0.196 | 119.8 | 111.6 |
It all comes back to expectation. Boston's eFG% in the playoffs is 57.0% overall, so even with a hot pair of games, they're still below expectation to their larger sample that also ranked top five in the regular season (56.6%).
As for Miami, they've gone cold for two games, but at 57.6 eFG%, they're still so far above their regular season mark (53.0%) that I'm not sure they're still due to decline as this series progresses.
Under 210.0 (-108) - Lean
The downward correction from sportsbooks was appropriate for a series that's getting even slower. The 87.50 pace from Game 5 was the slowest in this series, and that should continue to drop as the stakes are raised.
However, we obviously saw a white-hot shooting effort from the C's (60.8 eFG%) that should cool away from home. At TD Garden, Boston has a 57.7 eFG%. Away from their friendly confines, it drops to 56.2% -- which is still one of the better marks in the league.
Miami, though, isn't exactly in line for a hot night. They still mustered a 57.1 eFG% on the road Thursday, which is close to their series average that I mentioned has been an overperformance.
Above all, a sizable 12.0% turnover rate from both clubs has kept points off the board as the pace has crawled to a standstill. We got just 207 total points in Game 5, so if that drop continues, this is still the side I'd take in Game 6 despite a less desirable number for this same matchup.
