NBA Finals Game 5 odds and picks: Betting on Mavericks over Celtics for the drama alone

Listen, I’m not going to BS you here. I don’t know what’s going to happen in Game 5 tonight any more than the next person. If I did, I wouldn’t have been as wrong as I’ve been so far about the NBA Finals.

Don’t get me wrong, I had the Boston Celtics winning the series — which they still appear primed to do. But I didn’t see them going up 3-0 and coming close to a sweep. Once they were up 3-0, I thought it more likely they’d finish the sweep than not. I was wrong about that too.

Now, I’m submitting. I don’t care about being right. I’m unabashedly taking the Mavericks tonight, and it has nothing to do with any strategies they might employ or how their Game 4 performance might carry over. It’s not about being right in my original prediction of Celtics in six, either. I don’t care about that.

I’m picking Dallas for the drama, and the drama only. And you should too.

Bettors seem to be taking the same approach at BetMGM — 58% of tickets and 59% of the handle is on Dallas. Though odds are against a Mavs win. Boston is favored by 6.5 points at home, where they’ve lost just six games all season. But can you imagine if the Mavericks are able to win Monday and force a Game 6 back in Dallas?

Suddenly the Celtics are the team playing with a ton of pressure to not allow this thing to go seven games and potentially become the first team to ever blow a 3-0 lead. And that’s the kind of storyline I’m now rooting for now, because if we’re being honest this series has been a letdown so far.

We expected more from Luka Doncic, we expected more from Kyrie Irving and we expected more from Dallas as a whole. I didn’t expect the Mavericks to win, but I did expect to see what we saw in Game 4 a lot sooner. If this series ends in five, it will not have been enough to make this a satisfying series.

If Dallas gives us another strong game — a game in which Boston also shows up — I’ll be happy. So let’s pull for the Mavericks tonight and a more interesting series.