NBA Betting Guide for Friday 5/19/23: Will the Heat Cover Again?
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 certain 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. All injury news and notes come from the official NBA injury report unless otherwise noted.)
Miami Heat at Boston Celtics
Boston Celtics -9.0 (-110)
We've seen the Celtics respond in this situation in the postseason, and oddsmakers are expecting them to do it again.
We expected Boston to be the better team with a +7.1 net rating entering the series to Miami's +4.7. Obviously, in Game 1, Jimmy Butler put forth another heroic effort the rescue the Miami Heat with eight points and three steals in the fourth. Miami pulled away late.
Those three steals were turnovers that directly flipped how I'd approach Game 2 looking at Basketball Reference's Four Factors:
| Team | Pace | eFG% | TOV% | ORB% | FT/FGA | ORtg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BOS (0-1) | 96.5 | 0.58 | 13.8 | 24.3 | 0.272 | 120.3 |
| MIA (1-0) | 96.5 | 0.635 | 11.4 | 21.9 | 0.176 | 127.5 |
They dominated the glass and the free-throw battle -- both of which were in Miami's direction entering the series. With a 57.2 eFG% for the playoffs including Wednesday, Boston is the best shooting team left in the playoffs. Miami (55.2%) can hang tight in moments, but their 51.6% three-point rate (on 31 attempts) just won't stick.
I expected fewer threes and timely turnovers forced for the Heat tonight, which should significantly swing things in the favorite's direction.
Under 215.5 (-110)
I slant toward the under based on my handicap for the spread and a shooting trend.
In the five postseason games the C's have won by double digits to this point, those games have held an average point total of 212.0. Only one eclipsed 220 points against the fast-paced Atlanta Hawks. The Heat were 29th in pace during the regular season, so they're not exactly Atlanta (T-9th).
Plus, both teams are absolutely due for regression in their key scoring areas from Wednesday. As mentioned, the Heat shouldn't shoot 51.3% from deep too often. They're at 37.8% from the playoffs and were one of the worst regular-season teams by percentage (34.1%) in the entire league.
Boston made 23 of 28 shots (82.1%) from inside five feet, though. They're one of the better teams at the rims in the playoffs by percentage (66.6%), but even that mark is elevated beyond what we saw in the regular season (66.0%).
A vast majority of the money and tickets today are coming in on a duplicate result of Wednesday, which was the visiting Heat covering the spread in a game over the expected point total. I couldn't run faster toward the other sides.
