Suns +4.5 at -115
Basketball Betting Analysis: Our Top NBA Picks for July 14 (Archive)
The NBA Finals resume tonight. Here is a breakdown of the best bet to place. Top Sportsbooks have released their odds for tonight’s NBA Finals match-up between Phoenix and Milwaukee. Currently, the Suns lead this series 2-1. Milwaukee will need to win again at home in order to even the series. For reasons that I will explain, you should play the spread for this game.
Phoenix Suns vs. Milwaukee Bucks
Wednesday, July 14, 2021– 9:00 PM EDT at Fiserv Forum
Reviewing Game 3
After Milwaukee beat Phoenix in Game 3 by 20 points, the sports media talking heads are claiming that Milwaukee has "figured things out." For your sports betting, understand that an assessment of what transpired in Game 3 will demonstrate that the talking heads are wrong to make this claim.
One reason why the Suns lost is the disparity in second-chance points. In terms of second-chance points, Milwaukee outscored Phoenix 20-2. Second-chance points are largely a matter of effort because they are earned by players who hustle for loose balls, box out and attack the glass, and so forth.
After the Suns were outscored so heavily in this respect, one must expect them to reassert themselves. In Game 2, for example, both teams had scored almost the same number of second-chance points. Secondly, three-point shooting variance fell heavily in Milwaukee’s favor. This fact is transparent in the following distinction: whereas Milwaukee converted 52.6-percent of its wide open three-point attempts in Game 3, Phoenix made 35.7-percent of them.
During the entire playoffs, Phoenix has converted a higher rate of wide open three-point attempts, while Milwaukee’s conversion rate has been drastically lower. So one must treat Game 3 as an anomaly. Thirdly, the whistle benefitted Milwaukee to a significant degree as the Bucks accrued 10 more free throw attempts. The disparity in free throws will even out, just like it did after the first game in Phoenix.
In particular, Giannis often benefitted from a soft whistle. Most bizarrely, he made 13 of 17 free throw attempts, although his free throw percentage this postseason is 57.1 percent. One can’t reasonably expect another free throw-shooting effort like that out of Giannis. So the Bucks did not "figure things out." They simply benefitted from the whistle, from positive variance at the free throw line and behind the arc, and from a sense of urgency produced by their awareness of being down 2-0.
Game 3 in a postseason series situates a classic betting spot in favor of the home team down 2-0. Now that the Suns have lost, they will rediscover their psychological edge. Like the disparity in second-chance points and wide open three-pointers, the disparity is free throws will even out.
Deandre Ayton
To be more specific, a lot of Phoenix’s problems revolved around center Deandre Ayton’s defense. Most problematically, Ayton got into foul trouble. His five fouls limited him to 24 minutes, whereas he had played 42 minutes in Game 3.
Know for your best bets that his foul trouble is just one more anomaly that benefitted Milwaukee in Game 2 in a meaningful way. I hope you don’t think that I am just lazily dismissing things as anomalies. My point is that, like Milwaukee’s Game 3 edge in free throws, second-chance points, and three-point shootings, these are things that, per an objective analysis of longer-term data, we should not expect to favor the Bucks yet again in Game 3.
In terms of Ayton’s foul trouble, he had never picked up more than four fouls all postseason despite playing as many minutes as he does. After suffering from foul trouble in Game 3, he will be uniquely conscientious of his need to stay on the court. It’s crucial for him to stay on the court because, in these NBA Finals, the Suns are +17 with Ayton on the court, -14 when he is off the court.
Crucially, Ayton does not need to foul in order to deter Giannis because, in the regular season, Ayton held Giannis to 10-of-24 shooting on the floor. Ayton is an athletic, long, flexible defender who can keep Giannis from dominating the paint while he also challenges Milwaukee’s front court on the defensive end.
Phoenix’s Fixable Offensive Problems
Besides having an unusually abysmal efficiency rate from behind the arc, individual Sun players shared in the lack of urgency that characterized the team’s overall effort on both sides of the court. Devin Booker is often someone who draws a lot of fouls at the basket -- Game 2 against the Lakers provides one solid example of his potential to be aggressive. He amassed 17 free throw attempts in that game, which is only somewhat inconsistent with what he’s done in numerous other postseason games.
Mikal Bridges will sometimes be assertive, sometimes deleteriously passive. In Game 3, he was the latter, whereas he was more assertive in his 27-point effort in Game 2. Likewise, Booker had a rare sub-20-point effort, despite the degree to which his characteristic versatility in terms of shot selection and his speed on offense help him score more than 20 points. Booker as well as Chris Paul are still doing a great job of hunting for switches, thus exploiting Milwaukee’s perennially broken ball-screen defense.
Maybe Cam Payne can, with his driving ability, also replicate his Game 1 efficiency off the bench. But between Ayton, who scored 18 points in 24 Game 3 minutes, Booker, Paul, and Bridges, Phoenix has a lot of proven weapons with which to hurt Milwaukee’s ball-screen defense as well as the Bucks’ continually vulnerable perimeter defense. For the above reasons, invest in Phoenix with your NBA Picks.
NBA Pick: Suns +4.5 at -115 with BetOnline (visit our BetOnline Review)
*The line and/or odds on picks in this article might have moved since the content was commissioned. For updated line movements, visit BMR’s free betting odds product.