NBA Finals Best Bets for June 13: Let’s Stick With the Pacers

The Thunder Will Not Bounce Back

Many bettors expect a tremendous performance from Oklahoma City tonight because they lost Game 3. Their reasoning is that because the Thunder are a great team — media talking heads hype them up a lot — and because the Thunder lost their last game, they should be expected to play much better tonight.

However, history shows that OKC’s ongoing road struggles — the Thunder are now 0-8 ATS in postseason away games — trump prospects of them bouncing back from a bad performance:

• In the first round, against a Memphis team that they matched up well enough to beat by a combined total of 70 points in Games 1 and 2, they failed to cover the spread in a narrow Game 3 road victory before winning by even fewer points on the road in Game 4.
• Against the Nuggets, they lost Game 3 in Denver. While they won Game 4 in Denver, the Nuggets lost that game by only five points while converting 21.6 percent less of their wide-open three-point attempts than the Thunder did.
• In the last round, the Thunder were embarrassed in Game 3 in Minnesota before winning Game 4 by all of two points.

OKC’s failure to cover playoff road games is a trend that we must keep riding.

The Thunder Shot Beyond Themselves in Game 3

I find it profoundly important that the Thunder scored a series-low 107 points in Game 3 in Indiana while converting 45.5 percent of their three-point attempts.

Both teams had similar conversion rates on their open three-point attempts, but the Thunder made way more of their wide-open ones. This disparity is important to note because the Thunder, if ever, only follow up a strong three-point shooting performance in a given game with another one if they are at home:

• They shot 27.3 percent from deep in Game 2 against Minnesota after they went off from deep in Game 1.
• They shot 25.7 percent from behind the arc in Game 3 in Denver after thriving from behind the arc in Game 2.
• They converted 27.5 percent of their three-point attempts in Game 6 in Denver after their three-point shooting was superb in Game 5.

People think that the Thunder are so great because of how they play at home. Their decline in three-point shooting on the road is marked and microcosmic of their team as a whole. Their year-long three-point conversion rate on the road is really bad. It is .2 percent better than the overall three-point conversion rate of the awful Utah Jazz.

One must expect the Thunder to decline dramatically from deep in Game 4 relative to their three-point shooting output in Game 3. Then, I don’t see how the Thunder can exceed 100 points. This is a group that barely exceeded 100 points on the road in Denver where they made Nuggets defenders look very good even though Denver has had a bottom-half defense all year and lacks the quality in their perimeter and interior defenders that Indiana has proven to have with their wins in Game 1 and 3 where they held the Thunder to fewer than 111 points.

SGA and Jalen Williams

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander suffered his worst performance, by far, of the series. He experienced his lowest point total and his worst field goal conversion rate — he was even less efficient than he was in Game 1. Moreover, he committed six turnovers.

This is no coincidence: Andrew Nembhard and the lengthy Aaron Nesmith are graded as excellent perimeter defenders for the Pacers. They have a strong track record in these playoffs against other star guards like Jalen Brunson and Donovan Mitchell, and now they have proven to be comfortable against Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who commonly looks lifeless on the road.

Jalen Williams is a crucial component of OKC’s offense because he is supposed to serve as the secondary scoring option who complements Gilgeous-Alexander’s productivity.

The Thunder scored 107 points in their Game 3 loss with an excellent game from Jalen Williams, who scored 26 points. Williams is notoriously inconsistent. Since the first round, where he thrived in transition against Memphis’ terrible transition defense, he has always failed to score 20+ points in consecutive games. So, expect him to decline today as well.

Indiana’s Depth

At home, where role players are known to thrive — hence, for example, Alex Caruso and Aaron Wiggins won Game 2 for the Thunder in Oklahoma City and then suffered a massive decline in scoring in their Game 3 loss — Indiana is proving to be a very deep team.

Their depth helped make the Thunder gassed by the fourth quarter where OKC scored 18 points off all of six made field goals, committed five turnovers, and was blocked five times and had the ball stolen four times.

Besides on offense making the opposing defense work hard to defend action after action, Indiana’s ball-pressure on defense is immense. It is tough to endure for four quarters, especially because the Pacers have a bench player in Ben Sheppard who maintains strong defense when their starters rest. Sheppard was a pest against Jalen Brunson in the last round and he is someone whom Pacers fans laud as he helps contain Gilgeous-Alexander.

Indiana’s Many Scoring Options

In Game 3, Bennedict Mathurin amassed 27 points in just 22 minutes. It’s not like he simply went crazy from behind the arc — he didn’t.

OKC lacks an answer for him. He excels at creating his own shot. He aggressively attacks the rim and gets to the basket while drawing contact, complementing the interior scoring presence of Pascal Siakam, who, as he did in Game 3, also thrived with very efficient performances at home against a Cleveland team that is one of the very best at limiting field goal makes around the basket.

T.J. McConnell reliably provides a spark for the Pacers off the bench. If Mathurin doesn’t score 27 points tonight, one should expect McConnell to make up the difference based on his performance in other home games throughout the playoffs.

Supporting Tyrese Haliburton

Indiana’s coaching advantage, with one of the all-time winningest postseason coaches in Rick Carlisle, is immense in that it helps ensure that Tyrese Haliburton has formulas for getting into the paint.

Haliburton, as evident in his game-winning layup against annual Defensive Player of the Year candidate Giannis, is quick off the dribble and tough for any defender to contain. He just needs to be aggressive and to attack the basket, although his elite assist-to-turnover ratio indicates that he also excels at getting teammates involved.

With Mathurin, Siakam, and Haliburton, Indiana has weapons with which to put immense pressure on the Thunder interior defense, making it difficult for them to cover the corners promptly, where in the regular season they gave up the most threes and where the Pacers do a lot of their damage from behind the arc with which they are one of the most efficient three-point shooting teams.

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Myles Turner had a very poor Game 3 because he was sick. So one has to expect him to bounce back. Besides matching up well as a strong shot-blocker against the similarly lanky Chet Holmgren, Turner is an efficient three-point shooter whose presence on the perimeter helps clear up space for his teammates inside.

One also has to expect more from Nesmith and Nembhard, who get pressure taken off them by the solid play of Haliburton, whom the Thunder defense focuses on, yet still fails to contain.

Turner, Nesmith, and Nembhard have scored at least six more points in another game in this series than they did in Game 3, so they can certainly be more productive tonight, even though the Pacers still won Game 3 by nine when they underperformed.

They will also help the Pacers shoot better from three — while still winning by nine, Indiana underperformed with a 33.3 percent three-point conversion rate in Game 3.

Takeaway

The Thunder won’t bounce back tonight. Instead, they’ll continue to flounder on the road. In Game 4, their offense will decline with worse three-point shooting and an inferior performance from Williams.

Indiana’s offense will improve with stronger three-point shooting and greater support for Haliburton and Mathurin from guys like Turner, McConnell, Nesmith, Nembhard, and Turner.

In the spread for this game, we continue to see the expectation that the favored team bounces back, just like the Knicks were supposed to bounce back when they were strongly favored in Game 2 against Indiana and lost by more points than they did in Game 1. This is the NBA Finals and the Pacers are at home — they are obviously not going to relent.

Knowing they need just two more games to win the title, they will reduce that number to one tonight.

NBA Pick: Pacers +6 (-111) at BetOnline

Pacers +6 (-111)

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