The Cleveland Cavaliers are off to a modest 4-3 start, set for the second leg of a home-and-home with the Oklahoma City Thunder. When these teams met on Nov. 2, Oklahoma City won 117-112. Superstar guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander carried them to victory, dropping 43 points in 38 minutes.
The Cavs will look to salvage the split in this home-and-home as they head to Paycom Center to renew hostilities with the Thunder. Tip-off is at 8 p.m. ET. This should be another terrific game, featuring two of the best teams in the NBA. It may be a potential preview of the NBA Finals, so let’s dive into the best prediction markets to find the top prices for Cavaliers vs. Thunder.
The Thunder are priced at 58 cents to win this game. The point spread is Thunder -3.5, priced at 50 cents. This was a bit surprising to me. I figured that the Thunder would be favored by more points. Not only are they at home, but they just knocked off the Cavs on the road last game.
The Over/Under is currently listed at 228.5 points, with the Under priced at 52 cents. This number looks about right, especially since these teams just combined for 229 points in their matchup on Nov. 2.
I mentioned how I was initially surprised at how cheap the Thunder were in this game. But after taking a closer look, it makes sense to me. I’m riding with Cavaliers +3.5 in this spot.
When you take a look at the Nov. 2 meeting, you can see a clear outlier. The Cavs went 14-of-24 from the free throw line. Shooting 58% from the line is not the norm for any NBA team, let alone the Cavs, who are 74.7% on the year. Expect their free-throw shooting to normalize for this meeting, which could produce a different outcome than what we saw two days ago.
On top of that, the Thunder haven’t been that impressive lately. We saw them get blown out by the Mavericks and Rockets in their previous two games. With the Cavs desperate to salvage the split in this home, I’ll take them +3.5 here. This should be a close game that comes down to the wire, with Cleveland having a legit chance of winning outright.
When diving into NBA prediction markets, we see that the Thunder have moved from 56% to 58% favorites. This makes sense because they have home-court advantage here. But with them barely squeaking out a win thanks to poor free throw shooting in their last meeting with the Cavs, coupled with injuries to Holmgren and Williams, I’m going Cleveland +3.5 here.
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