NBA Betting: Milwaukee Bucks at Miami Heat
The Miami Heat will continue their NBA title defense on Tuesday night as they host the Milwaukee Bucks for Game 2. The Heat had little trouble with the Bucks in Game 1–at least in the second half. The Bucks hung around for the first half before the Heat ran them out of the building after the break for a relatively easy win and pointspread cover. The pointspread for Game 2 is the same and at least based on the game 1 result there’s little to suggest that the Bucks have anything for the Heat that they didn’t show in the first game.
Milwaukee limped down the stretch failing to cover 13 of their last 20 games. They weren’t a bad pointspread team on the road this year going 21-21-2 ATS but there’s a number of situational components that suggest that their ‘best work’ may be behind them. They weren’t a very good team in the second half overall going 13-26 ATS and were even worse in several situational breakdowns: they were 17-24 ATS overall this year against opponents with winning records and 7-16 ATS in that situation in the second half of the season. They were also a woeful 6-13 SU/ATS against the Southeast Division.
It’s no surprise to anyone watching NBA basketball this year that the Heat has been solid all year and has looked even better in the second half. Despite resting players and dealing with nagging injuries to Dwayne Wade the Heat were 12-3 ATS in their last 15 games. Miami was 26-16 ATS against opponents with winning records this year and were the diametric opposite of the Bucks–they improved to 16-8 ATS against teams with losing records in the second half of the season going 24-0 SU.
Our conclusion is that not only the Miami Heat is a different team than they were in the first half but so are the Milwaukee Bucks–the Heat improved in the second half and look to be in top form heading into the playoffs while the Bucks are heading the other way. It’s always tough to lay double digit pointspreads in the NBA–especially in the playoffs and especially on ‘public’ teams like the Miami Heat–but that’s the only way to play it here.
BET MIAMI HEAT -14 OVER MILWAUKEE BUCKS
