Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

NBA Finals in Las Vegas: Betting preview and picks of game 3

Cleveland Cavaliers

AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh

Cleveland Cavaliers guard Matthew Dellavedova (8) drives on Chicago Bulls guard Derrick Rose (1) during the second half of Game 6 in a second-round NBA basketball playoff series in Chicago on Thursday, May 14, 2015.

LeBron James’ team crumbled under somewhat bizarre circumstances in Game 1 before exercising resiliency in a Game 2 victory, making the series either team’s to take with the world’s best player and his cronies heading home.

That’s a fairly accurate description of the 2015 NBA Finals so far. It could have worked just as properly at this exact moment a year ago going into Game 3 of the 2014 NBA Finals.

Instead of an air conditioning glitch during regulation that doomed James and the Miami Heat last year in Game 1 at San Antonio, it was an offensive power outage in overtime that thwarted the Cleveland Cavaliers in Golden State.

James bounced back with 39 points and 16 rebounds to lead the Cavaliers to a 95-93 victory over the Warriors on Sunday night. The performance wasn’t much unlike his 35 points and 11 rebounds in willing the Heat to a 98-96 triumph against the Spurs in 2014.

Miami, of course, wouldn’t win another game, with James failing to coax much of anything from his outmanned teammates. That’s not to say Cleveland is destined to the same fate starting with tonight’s Game 3, which tips at 6 on ABC, but rather a reason to avoid humming along with the chorus of overreaction.

No, Golden State is not overrated. The Warriors’ historic season isn’t invalidated by a couple of mediocre performances against a possessed King James.

Likewise, Matthew Dellavedova’s candidacy to join the likes of Bruce Bowen and Ben Wallace as the best Finals defenders since the turn of the century has a ways to go yet. With Dellavedova as his primary defender, Stephen Curry shot 21.7 percent from the field in Game 2.

It was the NBA MVP’s season-low shooting percentage, meaning it’s extremely unlikely to dip any lower.

The betting market appears to be the only institution impervious to the repopulation of Cleveland’s bandwagon. Sports books opened Cleveland as a 1-point favorite for Game 3 — a drastic nine-point swing after it closed plus-8 in game 2 — before the spread flipped to Golden State in a few hours.

The series price, which floated as high as Golden State minus-700 after the Game 1 victory, is back to where it started. The Westgate Las Vegas Superbook lists the Warriors as a minus-240 (risking $2.40 to win $1) favorite with the Cavaliers coming back at plus-200 (risking $1 to win $2).

Splitting the games on the road would have resulted in a line shift further to Cleveland’s side in a normal year, but the loss of Kyrie Irving to knee surgery looms large. It’s factored into the number even while discussion moves on from injury woes to Cleveland’s comeback.

But responding too strongly to a pair of games can be a mistake. Don’t forget that James was favored to win his third straight title after tying a series on this same day a year ago.

Case Keefer can be reached at 948-2790 or [email protected]. Follow Case on Twitter at twitter.com/casekeefer.

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