Celtics vs. Heat: NBA Game 7 Betting Picks for Sunday, May 29 (2022)
The Eastern Conference Finals will come to a close this evening. Although this series has been full of blowouts—we’ve only seen two games decided by less than a double-digit margin—the books expect some competitive basketball. They have given us the second-narrowest spread of the series at -2.5. But I’m not convinced that the blowout streak is over, and I expect a commanding Boston win tonight.
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1. Celtics -2.5 | -115 at BetMGM
The Boston Celtics should win and cover. A sloppy Game 6 chock full of fouls cost Boston their chance to put the series away at home, but I think they’ll get the job done in South Florida. The Celtics are yet to lose consecutive playoff games this season, and they’ll right the ship in time to secure an NBA Finals bid.
Boston played better than Miami for most of the postseason. The Celtics swept the Brooklyn Nets, who had no business entering the playoffs as the No. 7 seed. They then took care of business against Giannis Antetokounmpo, one of the greatest players of all time. Meanwhile, the Heat got to play the lowly Atlanta Hawks and the injured Philadelphia 76ers.
The Celtics’ impressive playoff run rests on two factors. First, they have played strong team defense all season. Boston led the NBA in defensive rating during the regular season, and they trail only Milwaukee in the metric for the playoffs. Second, they have continued to shoot efficiently in the playoffs. Boston’s 54.2% effective field-goal percentage ranked ninth during the regular season. That number has fallen off slightly to 54% in the playoffs, but it’s much better than what we’ve seen from Miami. After recording a fifth-best 54.7% effective field goal percentage in the regular season, the Heat have slumped to 51.2% in the playoffs.
2. PPD: Al Horford 10+ Points/Boston to Win | +190 (.5u) at FD Sportsbook
Next, we’ll target a somewhat conservative player-performance double. Al Horford has scored at least 10 points in three of his five appearances this series. He failed to reach this number in his last game, but I’m willing to treat his 1-for-8 shooting performance as an outlier. It was his worst playoff performance by far, and he only once recorded a worse field goal percentage on a similar number of shots during the regular season.
We’re likely getting this line at a bit of a discount because of Horford’s putrid Game 6. But smart bettors have short memories when it comes to the occasional outlier. Horford has 10 or more points in 10 of his 16 playoff appearances for Boston this year, and three of those misses came against Milwaukee’s NBA-best playoff defense. Further, Horford is averaging 12.3 points per game in the playoffs and 10.8 per game this series.
I expect the Heat to focus on defending Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown tonight. The Celtics have only beaten the Heat in this series when one of those two leads the way scoring-wise. But that wasn’t the case against the Bucks, as Grant Williams and Al Horford led the way in a pair of Boston victories that saw Milwaukee clamp down on Tatum and Brown. Because we’ve seen Horford excel when the opposing defense focuses on shutting down star players, I feel confident about playing this line at +190.
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Isaiah Sirois is a featured writer at BettingPros. For more from Isaiah, check out his archive and follow him @is_sirois.