Call em what you want — Zombie Heat, Overrated, Jimmy Butler and a bunch of dudes — the Miami Heat are back in the Eastern Conference Finals for the third time in four years.
Guess who has the most playoff wins in the NBA since the 2019-20 season: You guessed it: The Heat, and they have 33. The Boston Celtics? They also have 33 — how fitting it is that we're back here.
This is the real class of the Eastern Conference and has been for much of the last 15-20 years. And while most of the attention will be on Butler, Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown and Bam Adebayo, neither club gets here without its role players.
Kyle Lowry will arguably be the most important one to monitor in this series.
Most of the basketball-watching public is still trying to wrap its heads around the Heat getting back to the Easter Conference Finals — I've been watching them all season and didn't see this coming — but they're a different team now than they were in the regular season and Play-In Tournament, at least partly due to Lowry's contributions.
Erik Spoelstra will be on his Magnus Carlsen all series long. (I'd say Bobby Fischer, but his bio is less than flattering.) And outside of Butler and Adebayo, expect Lowry to be among the essential chess pieces on the board.
Why Bet on Kyle Lowry?
Kyle Lowry's been Spo's rook — and, in some ways, his rock — this post-season.
Like a rook, Lowry begins competition in the corner — or off the bench, in basketball terms — but once unleashed onto the middle of the floor, he can control an entire contest because of the ground he covers on both ends of the floor. His ability to push the ball north and south and defend east to west has been game-changing.
The veteran point guard is healthy during this playoff run, a piece Spo and the Heat didn't have consistently throughout last year's journey, which ended in Game 7 on their home floor in this same series. As a result, he's added a perimeter defense element that he hadn't consistently shown during the regular season.
Lowry shot 29 percent from the field last postseason, including 24 percent on 3s and 37.5 percent on 2s. This is not the same guy 12 months later.
Lowry killed the Knicks in ways that transcended the stat sheet, but since we're leading into betting, we're focused on those numbers, which have been impressive.
Lowry is averaging 10.1 points, 4.5 assists and 3.0 rebounds on efficient 44/36/91 shooting splits in the playoffs while logging north of 25 minutes per game. Remove his first two playoff outings, and he's at 11.6 points, 4.9 assists and 3.1 boards per contest on the same splits and at 27 minutes per night. And against the Knicks? He tallied 12.2 points, 5.7 assists and 3.7 rebounds per game on essentially the same splits.
He's crossed 10 points six times in the playoffs, all within his last nine appearances, including in four of six in the Knicks series. In that series, he never recorded fewer than four assists, hit above six dimes once and also averaged 2.6 stocks (steals + blocks) per game, including 1.3 blocks (!!).
He's been consistently hitting overs, and here are some worth monitoring.
Lowry Points Props
It feels stupid to use regular season stats with the Heat given their transformation, but let's do it. Lowry averaged 13.3 points in four games against Boston, including a two-point effort in January — the others were 20, 17 and 14, all earlier in the season.
He can get to his pull-up jumper from 3 against the Celtics, and he's shooting 52% on 2s this postseason. Two major differences inside the arc: Lowry is shooting 54.5% from 3-10 feet, and 44.4% on long 2s (16+ feet).
How did he shoot last year? 14% from 3-10 feet and 20% on long 2s.
Expect his point total to hover around that 10.5 range, and at his trajectory, he should hit this 3-4 times this series, at least.
However, his combo bets could be even more reliable: He's filling up the stat sheet with rebounds and assists, too — the latter, in particular. On a good Lowry night, expect his points + assists total to be in that 18-20 range, where he's been residing in three of his last four games.
Lowry 3s Props
This will likely stay at 1.5 3s made per game. Lowry isn't putting forth high volume here, sitting at 3.8 attempts from downtown per game, but he's up to 4.3 per game when removing his first two playoff games and was at 4.7 3-point attempts per game in the Knicks series. He's hitting, as we mentioned, 35.7% in the playoffs from downtown, which is good in this case because you want 1.5 to be the over you have to hit.
Lowry attempted four or more 3s in every game against the Knicks except for Game 6, and he hit 2+ from deep in four of the six games. He also did it twice in the last three games of the Bucks series. The pull-up 3 should be there, and the Heat will need it if they're going to at least stretch this series.
Lowry Steals + Blocks Props
Stocks are probably the better option than just steals since Lowry is putting them up. This steals + blocks total could be 1.5 throughout the series, too. If it gets to 2.5, we might have a different conversation. Still, Lowry has gotten at least one steal in all but two playoff games.
And get this: He's gotten one block in all but four games played — including a four-block effort (!!) in Game 1 against the Knicks. Lowry's gotten at least one rejection in five of his last six and seven of his last nine games. He's at 1.1 steals and 0.9 blocks per game in the playoffs (1.1 each if you remove, again, his first two playoff games before he really became what he's been since).
In totality, Lowry is arguably the biggest swing piece of the series. In last year's ECF, he was largely inconsequential due to injury save for a Game 6 where he flashed for 18 points and 10 assists as the Robin to Jimmy Butler's 47-point Batman game. In Game 7, Lowry also got up to 15-7-3 while hitting key shots — however, he shot well under 40% each time.
If he hits his overs enough, he'll make you money, and he might even make the Heat improbably NBA Finals bound for the second time in four years, despite how lofty the odds make it seem.
