Lakers News: Betting Odds And Lines For Game 6 Against Golden State

Tonight, two underdogs will have the chance to wrap up their second round playoff series and advance to their respective conference finals. Your Los Angeles Lakers, the Western Conference's seventh seed at 43-39, and Jimmy Butler's Miami Heat, the East's eight seed with a 44-38 record, both lost possible Game 5 closeout games leading their series 3-1, but are now returning back home with another opportunity, probably their best opportunity, to move on.

Per The Action Network, both home teams are favored to beat their higher-seeded opponents tonight. Miami is a heavier favorite against the New York Knicks, who played their starting backcourt for every second of a must-win home game they almost lost on Wednesday, than the Lakers are against the reigning champion Golden State Warriors.

So can LA finish off the Dubs tonight at home? Let's dive in to some odds and lines and find out.

The Game Spread

The Lakers hold a slight edge at home tonight. Los Angeles is set as a three-point favorite to win. LA has won by three points in one contest, and by more than that in the other two. There were multiple moments in the second half of the Warriors' Game 5 victory over Los Angeles where it felt like, if LA wanted to close the gap and really make a run, it perhaps could have, but the team seemed happy to regroup and save its best stuff for tonight. Although they technically have another opportunity to win a hypothetical Game 7 in San Francisco, the Lakers' best opportunity to move on in this series is really tonight, at home with a rabid Crypto.com Arena crowd.

Point Totals For Jordan Poole, Austin Reaves

Both these young guards could be potential X-factors for their respective teams. Reaves has been a much steadier presence for Los Angeles than Poole has been for Golden State. Even when Reaves' shot isn't falling, he still defends at a high level, and has been tasked with covering Stephen Curry for the last few games. If either of these backcourt pieces gets going tonight, it could potentially swing the game. Reaves' over/under in scoring is set at 14.5 points, while Poole's is at 10.5. I'd take the unders for both. Reaves has only scored better than his current projected spread twice in this series, the rest of the team he's notched 10 or fewer points. Though Poole has also hit his expected over twice in this series, his valleys are worse than Reaves'. He's seen his minutes slashed, especially in losses, as when his shot isn't falling he's pretty useless. He's scored in single digits three times thus far.

Can D'Angelo Russell Make 3+ Triples?

Russell has +125 odds to make three or more three-pointers tonight, the fourth-best such odds in Vegas behind Stephen Curry (-1000) and Klay Thompson (-550), obviously, but also somehow behind teammate LeBron James (-105), who is making just 24.7% of his 7.0 (!) three-point tries a night through his first 11 playoff games this year. Russell has been fairly out and cold in this playoff series. He's averaging 13.8 points on .453/.318/.800 shooting splits, 4.8 assists, 3.0 rebounds and 0.8 steals a night. That 31.8% three-point tally is happening on 4.4 triple tries per game. Only once has he hit three or more treys in this series (he went 5-of-8 from deep in an impressive Game 3 showing), though he's hit that number four times overall in the playoffs if you include his run against the Memphis Grizzlies. Given the stakes and the home cooking in play tonight, I think he'll get there again. Take the odds.

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