NBA Preview: June 12

Game five of the 2023 NBA Finals takes place on Monday as the series shifts back to Ball Arena in Denver, Colorado. The Miami Heat find themselves on the brink of elimination as they trail the best out of seven series to the Denver Nuggets three games to one following a 108-95 game four loss. 

The Nuggets are one win away from winning their first NBA Finals in franchise history. They have looked very strong at home in the 2023 postseason so far. In 10 games, Denver has a record of nine wins and one loss, with their only defeat coming in game two of the NBA Finals, where Miami won 111-108. 

It should be noted that the Heat have been a very resilient bunch in the postseason so far. In their only other game when they faced elimination in the 2023 playoffs, Miami was a 7.5 point underdog to the Boston Celtics for game seven of the Eastern Conference Finals. Yet it was the Heat that came through with a 103-84 win, and prevented the embarrassment of being the first team in NBA history to have a three games to none series lead only to lose the series.

So what do we expect for game five tonight? You need to pick Denver. The Nuggets’s top players have been simply better in the postseason than the Celtics’s top players in the previous series. Jamal Murray and Nikola Jokic have been simply spectacular. Before tip-off starts at 8:30 PM ET, take the Nuggets at -8.5 and the under at 209.5. The Nuggets have won the last two games of the series by 15 points and 13 points respectively, and the Heat have only reached the century mark in total points in one of the four games in the NBA Finals to date.

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