The 2017 NBA Finals is right around the corner, but don’t fret. You still have got enough time to place some good series bets and profit out of the proposition bets. The bookies have offered quite a few of them, so it’s easy to be discouraged by the sheer number of them. Where to find value in this forest of numbers? I’ve got you covered with special Kyrie Irving edition – read on to find out where to place your wagers and how to keep your focus on these kind of events.
Choosing Kyrie Irving
As you’ve probably already noticed by the title, I’ve decided to concentrate on some props bets on the Cleveland Cavaliers’ starting guard Kyrie Irving. Did I randomly choose him? Maybe he’s my favorite player. No. And no. I’ve started out by surveying the books props list and trying to spot out the largest value. I’ll get back to that later, but once I figured out what it is, I’ve already done the most of the work. Really, the rest of the work is done by the bookie – they have to make sense of how the odds stack up and when a single player’s props are in question, getting one wrong will likely pull other odds in the same direction. For the 2017 NBA Finals series between the Golden State Warriors and the Cleveland Cavaliers, the role of Kyrie Irving has been largely misjudged and this opens up the needed space for our wagers.
Here’s what I’ve selected for you.
NBA Finals Assists by Kyrie Irving – Under 32½ Assists (-110)
This is where I’ve started from. While Irving is nominally a point guard and handles the ball a lot for the Cavs, he is not a playmaking guard, but a shooting one. Try recalling the last two Finals series. LeBron James was dominating the possession and initiated all the offense. He’s playing even more in this postseason and isn’t passing the torch or anything.
When the Cavs put the ball into Irving’s hands, it’s for him to score. He knows that, the opposition knows that, but he managed to get a solid return per investment and the Cavaliers won’t change it up. Even if his shots don’t fall, he never shies away from his balling character. Furthermore, the Warriors are likely to switch up the majority of his pick and rolls and he won’t draw any double teams, so his assist opportunities will be diminished.
He’s not a great nor a willing passer anyway – Irving averaged 5.8 assists per game during the regular season and it slightly dipped in the playoffs (5.6). The most he’s had during his career was 6.1 per game. His career playoffs average is 4.7.
To put these numbers in a correct perspective, Kyrie Irving would get somewhere from 5 to 6 assists per night if he’d play against an average defensive team in an everyday, common games. This is not an average defense, the pace will be intentionally slowed by his own team tactics and these are the Finals, where the players are more likely to err on the side of the cautions.
So, it’s to be expected that the assists are going to be on the decline, everything points out that way. But let’s keep them at 5.0 per game, the lower limit of the average expectancy described above. For Irving to top the given limit of 32.5 assists in the series, we’d have to have 7 games in the series and he’d have to play in each one (I’m not trying to jinx the young fella, but injuries do happen sometimes). That’s a desirable but unlikely scenario, so I’ve quite happy with taking the under side.
Let’s move on and see where this discovery leads us to.
NBA Finals FTM by Kyrie Irving – Under 26½ FTM (+100)
So if the Cavs are going to put the ball in his hand for the scoring, and his aggressiveness ensures us quite a lot shot attempts in this series, this should also have an effect on his number of free throws.
The Warriors defense will force him to make an extra move but Irving is so adept at handling the ball and not afraid to attack the rim that he’s likely going to see more trips to the charity stripe than usual. Yet, he isn’t looking for contact as much (looking to adjust the attacking angle) as some other guards on drives and the Warriors can contest without fouling, so let’s do the math here as well.
Irving gets to the line about 4.6 times per regular season’s game, and this slightly increases to 4.8 in the playoffs. With the highest probability of that this series ends in 5 or 6 games, this would give us a highest probability interval of 23.5 – 28.2 free throw attempts. Luckily, Irving is an excellent FT shooter, scoring about 90 percent of his foul shots. This calculates to roughly 21 – 25.5 FTM for a five or six games series of games against average teams in common games.
With an even odds at the 26.5 line, we’d need to have at least a three free throws increase to make it fair, and I can’t see this happening for Irving, not with the expected number of points taking a dip and smart defense of Warriors.
Free throws can stack up in close games if the teams keep intentionally fouling, but not only the Cavs have Kyle Korver for this role, the Warriors have been blowing out the opposition at such rate that I’d be more concerned if Irving will finish some of the games.
This leads me to our next bet.
NBA Finals Pts by Kyrie Irving – Under 154½ Pts (+100)
Kyrie Irving is capable of exploding and scores in bunches. There were numerous occasions when he gets hot and scores 15 points in a quarter. The Warriors can’t afford to put an extra defender on Irving and he’s proven that he can score one-on-one against better defenders than Curry. So the books are expecting him to score a lot of points.
It’s quite a generous projection with the 154½ points in the Finals though. Irving is Cleveland second leading scorer this season with 25.2 points per game (24.5 in the postseason). To get to the projected total, he’d have to score 30.9 points per game in five games series, or 25.8 ppg in a series that ends 4-2. During the 7-game series last year, Irving scored 190 total points (27.1 ppg), but the Cavs didn’t have Love for one and a half game and two games went to overtime. Stick with the under points.
I’ll combine the last two prop bets in this read as they follow the same reasoning.
NBA Finals – Irving vs Curry Stephen Curry (-7.5 Pts +100)
NBA Finals – Irving vs K. Thompson Klay Thompson (+37.5 Pts -105)
With my expectations of 23.5 points per game for Irving, the Splash Brothers would have to go for 25 ppg (Curry) and 17.3 ppg (Thompson) to guarantee us the win if the series takes 5 or 6 games. Curry is smoking hot and I expect him to smash this handicap, while Thompson is far from it. He was ice cold against the Spurs, but the Cavs aren’t the Spurs when it comes to defense, so he’ll likely bounce back. I’m trusting him to use the space given and drop plenty of threes on the Cavaliers.
Good luck with your props bets and have fun watching the Finals.
