Nets @ Bucks Prediction: Back Nets to keep rolling at plus-money

After two absolutely wretched performances to open up this Eastern Conference Semifinal series, the Milwaukee Bucks return home Thursday night hoping to avoid falling to 3-0 to the Brooklyn Nets.

Despite Milwaukee giving no reason over their first two games to trust them, they opened as 3.5-point favorites in Game 3. The line has moved a bit, from -3.5 to -4, back to -3.5 and briefly -3 before the line was moved back to -3.5 earlier this afternoon.

Usually, I look at where the money is compared to the percentage of bets to identify who the public likes compared to the sharps and usually tend to follow the sharps. But not this time.

Like I said above, I haven’t seen anything from Milwaukee in this series to feel remotely confident that this is the game they’re going to stop sucking, just because they’re at home. I would’ve understood making the line closer, but to make it so Milwaukee is a 3-point favorite is absolutely absurd to me.

The Nets will be without James Harden and Jeff Green again tonight, but I really don’t think it matters.

Milwaukee was able to make the score look better than it was when Brooklyn stopped taking Game 1 seriously, allowing Milwaukee to cut it to single digits despite being outscored by a combined 16 points in quarters two and three.

I wrote that I didn’t think the Bucks could play worse in Game 2 than they did in Game 1, and they went out and lost by 39 and am pretty sure they were down almost 50 at one point. I’m not going to believe that, just because the series has now moved to Milwaukee, that all of their hardships and problems to this point will just be magically figured out.

In my series preview, I also wrote that we’d see Kevin Durant’s scoring numbers come down being guarded by Giannis after being guarded by Jayson Tatum or inferior talents the Celtics roster was filled with. I felt comfortable in that after watching the two go at it over a 2-game stretch late in the season. But Durant hasn’t missed a beat. He averaged 32.6 points per game in the first round to 30.5 in this round. If he actually had to play late in these last two games, it would likely be more.

It’s rare in life you get a shot at redemption, so as a Milwaukee series ticket holder, the fact that I can get Brooklyn at plus-money tonight as my ecstatic. I’m all over Brooklyn ML +135, despite that being the public side.

For our prop bet, lets go with Giannis Antetokounmpo over 5.5 assists. The man simply needs help, and I think knows that he alone can’t give the Bucks any momentum. He needs Khris Middleton and his supporting cast to hit shots now more than ever.