{"id":11195,"date":"2010-12-02T08:58:11","date_gmt":"2010-12-02T13:58:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/?p=11195"},"modified":"2010-12-02T08:58:11","modified_gmt":"2010-12-02T13:58:11","slug":"pro-basketball-betting-miami-heat-vs-cleveland-cavaliers-predictions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/pro-basketball-betting-miami-heat-vs-cleveland-cavaliers-predictions-11195\/","title":{"rendered":"Pro Basketball Betting: Miami Heat vs Cleveland Cavaliers Predictions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Miami Heat at Cleveland Cavaliers
\nThursday, 12\/2\/10, 8:00 PM EDT, TV:\u00a0 TNT
\nOpening Point Spread:\u00a0 Miami -6
\nCurrent Betting Line:\u00a0 Miami -5.5
\nOpening Total:\u00a0 192
\nCurrent Total:\u00a0 191.5<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
All eyes will be on LeBron James with the Miami Heat visiting the Cleveland Cavaliers at Quicken Loans Arena<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Miami heads to Cleveland on Thursday night and that means the return of star LeBron James since he left the city and took his talents to South Beach.\u00a0 \u201cIt\u2019s going to be tough, but I\u2019m there to win a basketball game,\u201d said James.\u00a0 \u201cI understand.\u00a0 I understand how passionate fans are about sports.\u00a0 I\u2019m ready for whatever response that I\u2019m going to get.\u201d\u00a0 The Heat are coming off an impressive 97-72 win in a game that saw them have a 34-point advantage at one point, as James was need for just 31 minutes and sitting out the entire fourth quarter in allowing the focus to turn to tonight.\u00a0 Miami is 11-8 overall on the season, including a 2-2 mark on the road against Eastern Conference opponents.\u00a0 The team is 5-13 ATS on the year and currently listed as road favorites on the NBA lines page.<\/p>\n

The Heat will be meeting the Cavaliers for the first of four matchups this season.\u00a0 Last season, Cleveland won the season-series, 3-0, but that was with the services of James in its lineup.\u00a0 Miami is 42-38 all-time versus the Cavaliers in the regular season, including a 15-25 mark in games played in tonight\u2019s city. \u00a0 Last night\u2019s victory marked the fifth time the squad has beaten an opponent by at least 20 points this season.\u00a0 The Heat also held all five of Detroit\u2019s starters to single-digits, marking the fourth time that has happened in franchise history.<\/p>\n

Cleveland has alternated wins and losses over its last four games and will look to win its sixth game in a row against the Heat.\u00a0 In their last five meetings overall, the Cavaliers are outscoring the Heat by a 102.2-94.0 margin.\u00a0 In hopes of picking up the home underdog victory, the team is likely to rely heavily on its bench play, as the unit currently ranks first in the NBA in scoring averaging 44.7 points per game.\u00a0 The bench has outscored its opponents in all but four games this season.\u00a0 Cleveland enters this highly-anticipated contest with a 6-7 overall mark against the East, including a 3-4 record at Quicken Loans Arena.<\/p>\n

The Cavaliers dropped a 106-87 home game to the Boston Celtics on Tuesday night, getting outscored in the paint by a large 60-26 margin.\u00a0 \u201cThat\u2019s killed us,\u201d said J.J. Hickson.\u00a0 Cleveland has been led offensively by the play of point guard Mo Williams, who is averaging 15.9 points and 5.3 assists, both teams highs.\u00a0 In the previous three games before the Boston contest, he was averaging 23.3 points, 8.3 assists and 4.3 rebounds.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019m getting more healthy and closer to 100 percent,\u201d he commented.\u00a0 \u201cWe\u2019re staying on top of the groin injury.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bettors will be interested in knowing that the Heat are 2-10 ATS as a favorite, while the Cavaliers are 22-5 ATS after a SU loss of more than 10 points.<\/p>\n

The hard court action is heating up and so are the NBA handicappers at Maddux Sports.\u00a0 Don\u2019t miss out on a single play and start joining them today!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Miami Heat at Cleveland Cavaliers Thursday, 12\/2\/10, 8:00 PM EDT, TV:\u00a0 TNT Opening Point Spread:\u00a0 Miami -6 Current Betting Line:\u00a0 Miami -5.5 Opening Total:\u00a0 192 Current Total:\u00a0 191.5 Miami heads to Cleveland on Thursday night and that means the return of star LeBron James since he left the city and took his talents to South […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":181,"featured_media":9323,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1444,133],"tags":[65,3622,4037,66,707,4036],"class_list":["post-11195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines","category-nba-handicapping","tag-cleveland-cavaliers","tag-eastern-conference","tag-j-j-hickson","tag-lebron-james","tag-miami-heat","tag-quicken-loans-arena"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/181"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11195"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11195\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11196,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11195\/revisions\/11196"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}