NBA Finals Best Bets for June 11: Indiana Strikes Back at Home

Key Trend Number One

One crucial component of this series is Indiana’s head coaching advantage. Rick Carlisle is showing why he’s one of the all-time winningest head coaches in playoff history.

A head coach is responsible for rewatching a game, figuring out what went wrong, conceiving adjustments, and preparing his team to execute well in the following game. Carlisle’s excellence helps explain the following trend: Indiana is 4-0 after a loss in this postseason. Those four wins were dominant:

• The Pacers beat Milwaukee in Game 4 of the first round by 26 points.
• The Cavaliers in Game 4 of the second round by 20 points.
• The Knicks in Game 4 of the third round by nine points.
• The Knicks in Game 6 of the third round by 17 points.

Thunder backers express concern with Indiana’s tendency to lose Game 3, but this concern is nonsensical because whenever the Pacers lost Game 3 they had a two-game series lead. Teams — not just Indiana — struggle for obvious psychological reasons to play well with such a lead: the team that is down two games plays with much more desperation.

But now it’s Indiana’s turn to play with greater sharpness.

Thunder on the Road

Throughout the postseason, OKC has lacked sharpness on the road. The Thunder so far are 0-7 ATS in road games.

Their best road win came by six points against an eight-seed Memphis team that was bad enough to lose Games 1 and 2 against them by a combined total of 70 points and that lost its star point guard during the course of that six-point loss.

How It Will Happen

In this series, Game 2 saw anomalous explosions from Thunder role players. The Thunder won by 16 points with Alex Caruso and Aaron Wiggins combining for 38 points. Both players combine for 16.2 points per game, though, so one should expect a major drop-off in production from them, especially on the road.

Even if Chet Holmgren and Jalen Williams sustain the improved scoring that they experienced in Game 2, the Thunder will score substantially fewer points when their role players decline in Game 3 on the road.

Conversely, in Game 2, key scorers for Indiana underperformed. The Pacers have always exploded offensively after a loss because their coach reliably makes adjustments to help ignite the offensive prowess of different scorers.

Pascal Siakam

The Pacers in Game 2 scored 107 points, with Pascal Siakam having a very inefficient and otherwise terrible offensive game.

Indiana’s offense loves to operate inside-out, meaning that its success in the paint will enhance its outlook behind the arc. So, it is crucial for the Pacers to force the Thunder to respect their inside scoring. Siakam plays a major role here.

Siakam has had several bad road games throughout the playoffs, so Game 2 can’t be surprising. But he excels at home. Consider the second round, for example, against a Cleveland team that is one of the very best at limiting field goal makes around the basket. Siakam converted 57.1 percent and 90 percent of his field goals in two respective home games against the Cavaliers. OKC has two good defensive bigs, but there’s nothing to suggest that they’re better than Cleveland’s big-man duo.

Siakam has produced several tremendous scoring outputs in these playoffs and can produce another one in Game 3.

Tyrese Haliburton

In Game 2, Tyrese Haliburton had one of his occasional disappearing acts — he is known to do this sometimes.

However, he reliably bounces back by being more aggressive. Expect him to attack the paint more in Game 3, further forcing the Thunder defense to respect Indiana’s paint presence.

Haliburton is very quick off the dribble — see the game-winning layup against elite defender Giannis, for example. He capably attacks the paint where he poses a significant scoring threat, as when he scored 25 points in Game 1 of this series, and gets teammates involved with his regularly elite assist-to-turnover ratio.

This will be another area where Indiana’s elite coaching comes into play. Expect Carlisle to choose different, unexpected formulas to enable Haliburton to penetrate further. We won’t simply be seeing a bunch of high pick-and-roll actions.

When Indiana attacks inside more, Thunder defenders won’t be able to defend the corners as quickly as they did in Game 2. They will succumb to the pressure that Indiana’s offense places on their interior defense.

When Haliburton plays a greater role by being more aggressive, teammates Andrew Nembhard and Aaron Nesmith will also have an easier time.

Better Three-Point Shooting

Even without accounting for the stronger inside presence that their offense will have in Game 3, the Pacers must be expected to shoot better in Game 3.

They missed a lot of open three-point attempts in Game 2. In Game 3, they will resume their strong three-point shooting from Game 1, where they dominated, especially from the corners against a Thunder defense that in the regular season allowed the most corner threes per game.

Indiana’s offense has, all year, been one of the most efficient ones behind the arc. Its great pace and the fluidity of its actions will especially exploit a Thunder defense that is playing its two-big lineup more often, with Isaiah Hartenstein characteristically being rather slow.

Conversely, the Thunder’s three-point shooting declines dramatically on the road. Its year-long three-point conversion rate on the road is nearly identical to the overall three-point percentage of the lowly Utah Jazz.

OKC’s worse shooting makes the Thunder offense easier for Indiana to defend. Its defenders can provide more help against Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who was very inefficient in Game 1 and who will not receive the level of support from his teammates in Game 3 that he did in Game 2.

On the road, the Thunder offense has lacked sharpness, as evident when it vanished down the stretch in Game 3 in Denver, for example. Their road struggles have encompassed terrible half-court offense against teams, like Denver, that lack the quality in their perimeter defenders that Indiana does with Nembhard and Nesmith. Nembhard helped limit the efficiency of Cleveland’s star guard Donovan Mitchell, for example, and the lengthy Nesmith is graded as a strong interior defender and ball-screen navigator.

Takeaway

Indiana lost Game 2 123-107. The Pacers will get at least ten more points in Game 3 with stronger play from Siakam and Haliburton and with better three-point shooting in general. The Thunder will score at least ten fewer points with their role players, especially Caruso and Williams, declining on the road.

Indiana has the best head coach. Carlisle will help his Pacers strike back, especially at home against the Thunder.

NBA Pick: Pacers +5.5 (-112) at BetOnline

Pacers +5.5 (-112)

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