NBA Finals Best Bets for June 5: Indiana Will Surprise People

Series History

Much is being made of the 2-0 record that the Thunder attained against Indiana in the regular season. However, two games form a small data sample and therefore don’t really say anything. Last year, showing that Indiana can win in this matchup, the Pacers won by ten in Oklahoma City.

They won their only meeting against the Thunder when the latter had a healthy Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. The Pacers scored 121 points without shooting well from deep and limited Gilgeous-Alexander’s field goal efficiency.

Indiana’s Key Advantage

Indiana arguably has the best head coach in this matchup.

With people focused on the players, coaching matters more than they think. See the second round where Denver, with inferior personnel, took the Thunder to seven games. The Nuggets were led by an interim coach whose rotations, strategies on defense against Gilgeous-Alexander and timeout usage helped his team overcome OKC’s personnel advantage three times.

Indiana’s Rick Carlisle just led Indiana past the talented top-seeded Cavaliers and past the Knicks. Say what bad things you want about the Pacers’ opponents thus far, but Carlisle is one of the winningest playoff coaches of all time. At some point, criticizing the playoff teams that he beats just sounds silly.

Indiana’s coaching advantage will shine in Game 1 because Carlisle will have had many days to watch film, cogitate and prepare his team. So far in this postseason, Indiana is 3-0 in Game 1s: they blew out the Bucks before winning in Cleveland and New York.

Underrated Pacers

After a rough start to the season, Carlisle’s Pacers have gone 52-21. They closed the regular season on a 14-4 run, which is one game off the Thunder. Qualitatively, these teams are more comparable than oddsmakers suggest.

Oddsmakers especially fail to account for the Pacers’ success on the road, where they are 6-2 in the postseason, with both losses coming in games that they entered with a multi-game series lead.

While the Thunder’s margin of victory at home looks impressive because they dismantled a Memphis team that always loses to them, they have lost at home before, with the long layoff affecting them in Game 1 against a Denver team that, like Indiana entering this series, had played more recently.

Turnovers

Oklahoma City wins so many games largely because of its ability to force turnovers. This ability is pivotal to its outlook for any given game: in the playoffs, the Thunder are a mere 5-4 when forcing 18 or fewer turnovers.

The Thunder are not that good and are not the team that people consider them to be when they fail to force a lot of turnovers. Indiana’s outlook in this series, however, is strong because its offense excels at limiting turnovers. Its offense ranks several spots better in the turnover category than OKC’s other playoff opponents, underscoring the unique difficulty that Indiana will pose to OKC.

Tyrese Haliburton is elite in terms of assist-to-turnover ratio. Andrew Nembhard is another excellent ball-handler whose presence complements Haliburton’s.

The stability of the Pacers’ ball-handlers helps explain their elite efficiency in the half-court. If they can’t score quickly in transition, then they’ll initiate action after action, without turning it over, until the defense makes a mistake that they can capitalize on.

Their outlook on offense will always be strong because an offense’s high efficiency can only be negated by turnovers, which would limit its total number of possessions. But the Pacers will get possessions in addition to being efficient.

Three-Pointers

The Thunder have not faced an offense that will pass a defense to death like Indiana. This high volume of passing will lead especially to open three-point opportunities. Giving these up has been the bane of OKC’s defense thus far.

Out of the four teams that made it to the last round, the Thunder gave up the most open three-point attempts and the most wide-open ones. Minnesota’s Anthony Edwards isn’t even the passing playmaker that Haliburton is. Minnesota simply didn’t capitalize for the most part.

Whereas the Timberwolves couldn’t knock down their open shooting opportunities in Game 1 in Oklahoma City, for example, Indiana’s preparedness and its reliable Game 1 success will translate to success from behind the arc in this game. The Pacers’ shooters will especially thrive in the corners, where the Thunder are particularly vulnerable.

Overall, Indiana is the fifth-most efficient team from behind the arc and will be able to rely on several different players, even its center, Myles Turner, to shoot well from deep, much like Oklahoma City’s opponents have done when they won or covered the spread in these playoffs.

Dealing With Perimeter Defenders

Indiana’s top-ranked catch-and-shoot percentage, which benefits especially from its offense’s ball movement, will be at its best when center Isaiah Hartenstein is on the floor for OKC, who is slow on closeouts. The Pacers, with the pace that they play at and the depth that they have to sustain energy through four quarters, and with the full-court pressure that they like to apply on defense, tire defenders out, as evident in the last round, for example, in New York’s late-game collapses that were largely precipitated by lapses in their perimeter defense.

Criticize New York’s defense all you want, but OG Anunoby and Mikal Bridges are well-proven All-Defensive Team selections. Josh Hart is a characteristically tough defender, too. Indiana has done well tiring out opposing ball-handlers, making them less effective on defense, and on sustaining their efficiency against perimeter defenders who limited the likes of Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown of the defending champion Celtics.

Indiana’s Perimeter Defenders

The Pacers’ defense has been especially vulnerable in isolation. However, the Thunder offense rarely operates in isolation. Instead, the Thunder offense prefers ball-screens, which an Indiana defense that, uniquely successful, is limiting offenses to 0.86 PPP (points per possession) in the pick-and-roll for the ball-handler play type will be well-prepared for.

Aaron Nesmith and Andrew Nembhard both excel at navigating ball-screens and keeping pressure on the opposing point guard. Nesmith, in particular, did a great job of limiting the field goal efficiency of New York’s superstar point guard Jalen Brunson. In Game 4, for example, Brunson missed 10 of his 13 field goal attempts when Nesmith was on the floor.

Nembhard himself has a great history of limiting the efficiency of opposing star guards.

It really doesn’t make sense for Thunder backers to belabor the quality of OKC’s perimeter defenders when the Pacers have such an efficient and turnover-avoidant offensive system with a top-notch playmaking point guard and when they themselves have solid perimeter defenders to throw at OKC’s offensive centerpiece, Gilgeous-Alexander.

Forwards and Center

This is a great matchup for Indiana’s Myles Turner, who was obliterated in the last round by Karl-Anthony Towns, who always thrives against Turner. Turner won’t have to worry about OKC’s physicality or about an offensive rebounding machine like New York’s Mitchell Robinson. This will especially be true if Hartenstein proves unplayable because of his slowness against Indiana’s catch-and-shoot actions.

Turner is a lanky player who amasses blocks. He matches up well against the skinny Chet Holmgren, who was a significant part of the Thunder offense in the last round. Both Pascal Siakam (who has great length and recovery speed and who is known for his versatility that makes him effective both guarding the basket and the perimeter) and Turner are effective options against Holmgren.

With Turner complementing the prowess in transition and the general offensive ability of Siakam, who scored 24.8 points per game in the last round, especially with his shooting, the Pacers have the edge in the frontcourt.

Because the inconsistent Jalen Williams always needs time to get going in a series, as evident in his tendency to have some of his worst performances in Game 1 of a given series — he shot 5-for-20 in Game 1 against the Nuggets after his team had a lot of off-time following a non-competitive series, like the one that it just experienced against Minnesota — the Pacers will not have to worry about him.

Takeaway

With Williams and Holmgren ineffective, Gilgeous-Alexander lacks a secondary scorer, yet he can’t do everything by himself against Indiana’s ball pressure, which will fatigue him and hurt his defense, and array of solid perimeter defenders — even Ben Sheppard on the bench is a hound who doesn’t allow blow-bys and who pestered Brunson in the last round.

Indiana is a deep team with a lot of solid shooters. Its efficient offense will have plenty of possessions and will thrive especially from deep against a Thunder defense that is especially vulnerable against good three-point shooting.

OKC won’t get the turnovers that it needs to look like the team with an amazing record, which is the version of the Thunder that bettors have in their minds.

Indiana is sorely underrated in this matchup. The Pacers have the personnel to succeed and the coaching edge to maximize their matchup advantages.

NBA Picks:

• Pacers +9.5 (-113) at BetOnline

Pacers +9.5 (-113)

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• Chet Holmgren Under 16.5 Points (-105) at Bovada (visit our Bovada Review)

Chet Holmgren Under 16.5 Points (-105)

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