The top two teams in the Eastern Conference meet in the final when the Cleveland Cavaliers (8-2 SU, 5-5 ATS) visit the Atlanta Hawks (8-4 SU, 5-7 ATS) Wednesday in Game One.
You can watch the game live on TNT.
Before the season started many predicted the Cavaliers to be here, playing for the right to represent the Eastern Conference in the NBA Finals. Nearly seven months later here they are. Led by LeBron James, who is playing in the conference finals for a fifth straight year, the Cavs are back for the first time since 2009 having won eight of their 10 postseason games.
The same can’t be said about the Hawks, who were an afterthought back in late October. But they announced their arrival with a 19-game winning streak, placed three on the All-Star team behind the NBA’s Coach of the Year and are playing in their first conference finals. Atlanta won twice at home and took three of four regular season meetings with the Cavs going 3-1 ATS.
KEY INJURY
Cavaliers point guard Kyrie Irving practiced Monday and declared afterward he would play Wednesday. He’s been receiving treatment for a strained right foot and tendinitis in his left knee for most of the postseason and played just 12 minutes in Cleveland’s series-clinching win over Chicago on Thursday.
QUOTE TO NOTE
“I think it’s the players we have. I think we’ve been able to put together a group of high character guys that it’s kind of in their hearts, in their guts. They play unselfishly, they care about each other. They do all of the things that go into have good chemistry and it’s just a credit to the players that we have.” – Hawks coach Mike Budenholzer
BETTING TRENDS
- Cleveland is 7-12 ATS in its last 19 games overall.
- Atlanta is 2-5 ATS in its last seven home games.
- The UNDER is 5-1 in Cleveland’s last six road games.
KEY STATS
29.4: In 37 career games in the conference finals Cleveland’s LeBron James is averaging 29.4 points – his highest average in any round – and has won 23 times.
4.3: Hawks guard Kyle Korver, who scored 12.1 points per game during the regular season, averaged just 4.3 over the final four games against Washington in the conference semifinal round and failed to score better than six points in any of the four games.
ANALYSIS AND PREDICTION
By ousting Chicago in five games in their semifinal series, the Cavaliers got some much needed time off to rest and recuperate from the injuries that have haunted their top players. Kyrie Irving, nursing foot and knee issues, is feeling better and will play, and LeBron had time to get his ankle and back ready for a grueling series with the top-seeded Hawks. They’ll need to be as close to full strength as they can be to compete against a deep Atlanta squad. If Irving is close to 80 percent healthy the Cavs will have the two best players in the series and an engaged LeBron makes everyone around him better, which he did in the final two games against Chicago.
The Hawks will tell you they haven’t played their best in the postseason, yet here they are, ready to rumble with the Cavs for a trip to the Finals. That tells us a lot about the team, and we do mean team, the Hawks have. A group void of a superstar, the Hawks play a disciplined, team-oriented game predicated on ball movement and moving without the ball. Coach Mike Budenholzer experimented with a two-point guard offense, using both Jeff Teague and Dennis Schroder on the court at the same time to create more offensive opportunities, and we may see more of that strategy in this series. But the Hawks really need Kyle Korver to regain his regular season touch from beyond the arc to keep the Cavs honest.
Two contrasting styles make this a very intriguing series and, let’s face it, it’s always nice to see some different teams competing on the NBA’s biggest stage. The Hawks were bothered by scoring droughts in their first two series and can’t afford to endure lengthy lulls against the Cavaliers, who made the Bulls pay for their lapses. Like Chicago, Atlanta has a deep bench but unlike the Bulls, the Hawks aren’t afraid to use all their players. And the Hawks have the homecourt advantage, which they will use to win Game One.
Atlanta 104, Cleveland 97
The NBA lines for this contest will first be released by BookMaker sportsbook. Minute-by-minute spreads, totals and props are available for this game using the live betting platform at BookMaker.
Access live betting lines from your mobile device at BookMaker sportsbook! You can wager on sporting events as they unfold on television with BookMaker’s live betting platform. Real-time spreads, totals, props and moneyline odds are all available by clicking here so start betting with BookMaker today! The Cleveland Cavaliers and Atlanta Hawks square off on Wednesday, May 20, 2015, at 8:30 p.m. ET at Philips Arena. The contest will be broadcast nationally on TNT.
