Brandon Lang
The Pick: My 100 Dime winner is the Indiana Pacers.
The Line: The current line is +8 at the majority of books in Vegas and offshore as of 7:30 AM EST. Be sure to shop around for the best line available.
My Analysis
They match up well with them.
To put it bluntly, these 2 mets 4 times in the regular season but only one of those meetings were both teams at full strength.
It was the January 12th in Cleveland and the Pacers, as a 9-point underdog blew out the Cavs 108-93 with a dominant 2nd half.
Trailing by 13 at the half, they came out in the 3rd quarter and outscored the Cavs 19 to take a 6 point lead in the 4th and ran away in the 4th outscoring them 31-22.
The Pacers put 6 guys in double figures while Cleveland had 4 with Garland going for 20 and Mitchell for 19.
The Pacers outrebounded the Cavs 50-44 in the win. The amazing thing about the game was Tyler Hailburton scored only 2-points in the blowout win.
They met 2 days later and with Hailburton sitting out the Cavs went into Indiana and won 127-117.
The last 2 meetings were at the end of the year the Cavs and Pacers both rested starters..
Bottom line: The Pacers just really match up well with this Cleveland team and 8-points is just too many. End of story.
Give me the dog in this one to stay in this the whole way.