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The Celtics staged another comeback en route to a victory in Game 3, which means they can clinch their first title in 16 years tonight in Dallas. The Celtics have pretty clearly been the better team throughout these NBA Finals, and we’ve never seen a team erase a 3-0 deficit to go on to win a playoff series in NBA history. There’s a first time for everything, but to say the Mavericks are facing an uphill climb from here would be quite an understatement.
Regardless, we’ll have at least one more chance this NBA season to win some money over on PrizePicks. Let’s close the season in style.
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Now, let’s go through our NBA predictions to help make a PrizePicks entry for today.
The Mavs’ decision to tank the final 2 games of last season paid immediate dividends. Without rookie Dereck Lively, there’s no way Dallas even gets to the NBA Finals. He has proven to be quite the steal, and he’s fresh off of his finest outing of the Finals in Game 3. In a series-high 30 minutes, Lively piled up 11 points, 13 rebounds, and 1 assist after failing to crack 20 minutes in either of the first 2 games.
With the season on the line, could we see Jason Kidd decide to change his lineup and start Lively over the ineffective Daniel Gafford? We currently have Lively projected to play 25 minutes to Gafford’s 21, though this is a largely unpredictable situation. Kidd is more likely to ride the hot hand than anything else.
Lively is capable of topping 9.5 combined rebounds and assists on boards alone, but it’s not necessarily the most likely outcome, especially if he’s still coming off the bench.
At this point, it’s hard to imagine how Brown doesn’t win Finals MVP. He’s been the Celtics’ best player in this series, particularly offensively. After averaging nearly 30 points per game in the last round against Indiana, Brown is contributing averages of 24.3 points, 6 rebounds, and 5.7 assists per game against Dallas.
As you may expect, Brown is playing heavy minutes. He’s topped 40 minutes in consecutive games, and he surely would’ve done so in Game 1 had the Celtics not won it going away. We’ve got him projected for exactly 40 again tonight, but there’s certainly room for growth there if the game is competitive.
Brown only averaged 9.1 combined rebounds and assists during the regular season, but he also wasn’t topping 40 minutes a night. With the extra playing time we can safely expect, I think he’s a good value to top 10.5 in Game 4.
It was nice of Kyrie to decide in Game 3 to finally show up. After scuffling his way to just 28 total points on sub-40% shooting across Games 1 and 2 combined, he went out and poured in 35 points in 45 minutes on Wednesday. He canned 4 3-pointers after failing to even make 1 in either of the first 2 games, while a more aggressive approach resulted in 5 trips to the free throw line as well.
The Celtics aren’t going to send double-teams toward Kyrie or Luka Doncic, because they don’t want to let the Mavs’ secondary scorers beat them. So, Dallas needs both of their star guards to carry them in the scoring department if they’re going to have any hope whatsoever of getting back into the series.
It’s hard to get past the fact that Kyrie logged 45 minutes in the last game. Given the circumstances, another 45-minute effort is well within his range of outcomes tonight. It’s a bit risky, but I think the aggressive version of Kyrie will show up again.
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