NBA Playoffs Best Bets for April 23: Rockets Are Ready for Launch
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Rainman M.
- April 23, 2025
We’ve got three Game 2s on deck tonight, and the best value plays at top sportsbooks are Magic +10.5, Under 212 in Heat-Cavs, and a Rockets/Cavaliers moneyline parlay paying around -118.
So, let’s break down the betting odds and find the smartest plays to help you cash tonight.
Orlando Magic vs. Boston Celtics
Wednesday, April 23, 2025 – 07:00 PM EDT at TD Garden
Orlando’s Lessons
The Magic lost Game 1 in Boston by 17 points. Obviously, they are going to do things differently in order to create a different, more positive outcome.
In Game 1, Paolo Banchero and Franz Wagner dominated both touches and shot attempts for the Magic offense. Orlando learned that it can’t compete with Boston simply by relying on those two players.
Opportunities are going to arise for Banchero and Wagner’s teammates. Boston’s defense commonly collapsed on both players, knowing that they would try to dominate scoring for Orlando because they’re Orlando’s best scoring options.
Banchero and Wagner need to spend Game 2 getting their teammates more involved. Their teammates will need to step up. With a playoff game behind them, their teammates are going to have better composure, which encompasses a stronger willingness to shoot than was apparent in Game 1.
Candidates to Step Up
There are plenty of guys who can step up for Orlando. We can be certain of this because they already have stepped up before against Boston.
On December 23, Orlando beat Boston by four, scoring 108 points. Currently injured guard Jalen Suggs did play, but Banchero and Wagner were both absent.
Anthony Black is worth noting. He finished the regular season on a very strong note but was timid in Game 1.Â
Perhaps the candidate to step up most effectively is Cole Anthony. Anthony scored 18 and 23 points, respectively, in Orlando’s last two regular season games against the Celtics.
Black and Anthony were virtually absent in Game 1. Orlando scored 86 points, which is a low point total even for the worst offenses when they go up against the best defenses.Â
One can’t expect this point total to repeat itself, and this is because one has to expect greater support for Banchero and Wagner in the form of both more active off-ball movement and stronger shooting from their teammates.
Orlando’s Defense
In Game 1, the Magic held Boston to 103 points. The Celtics actually made an unusually high number of wide-open threes. One must expect their three-point conversion rate to decline in Game 2.
The Magic do have an elite perimeter defense. They are the best team at limiting three-point makes, positioning them positively against a Boston offense that relies more than any other team on three-point attempts.
Derrick White, in particular, will decline in scoring. White made seven three-pointers in Game 1 and now finds himself in a let-down spot.Â
When he made seven threes on November 6, he was 1-for-6 from deep in his following game and scored 14 points in that game, which went to overtime. Likewise, after making seven threes on November 12, he scored nine points in his following game.
As his games on December 15 and March 6 also show, he reliably declines in the game following one in which he made seven or more threes.
With Boston’s top scorer, Jayson Tatum out and White declining, Orlando’s defense will have substantially less to worry about.
When the Magic beat Boston in that 108-104 game, Jaylen Brown scored 35 points. So, they can even win if Brown has an amazing game, although Brown’s productivity in Game 1 suffered from the physicality and good defense of the Magic, who will be able to focus more on limiting Brown.Â
Boston will fail to sniff the point total that it attained in Game 1, whereas Orlando will score a lot more points than it did. I am seeing, at worst, a super close 99-97-type game in which Orlando easily covers, if the Magic don’t win straight-up.
NBA Pick: Magic +10.5 (-110) at BetOnline (visit our BetOnline Review)
Miami Heat vs. Cleveland Cavaliers
Wednesday, April 23, 2025 – 07:30 PM EDT at Rocket ArenaÂ
Game 1 Outcome
These teams combined for 221 points in Game 1, resulting in an “over” because the over/under was 215 points.
Cleveland’s offense flexed its superior muscle, especially by exploiting Tyler Herro’s poor defense. The Cavs amassed a lot of their points by targeting Herro on the defensive end. They were extraordinarily efficient in doing so.
Key Changes
Based on how both teams arrived at this point total in Game 1, we should expect a much lower point total in Game 2.
One seemingly obvious expectation is that Ty Jerome will score way fewer points. While it is unusual for a bench player to accumulate 28 points, Jerome was a first-round draft pick for good reason and has proven repeatedly to be a very good player.
Still, 20 points instead of 28 for him seems vastly more reasonable. Darius Garland also can’t be expected to make the deep threes that he did for Cleveland.
One key change is that the shot-making for both teams — not merely Jerome and Garland for Cleveland — will drop a bit.
Regarding Miami’s shot-making, metrics show that its scorers on offense overperformed based on the quality of shots that they took.
Herro’s Gotta Lock In
Cleveland does have a very good defense that is able to lock in on Herro on offense. Miami, which traded away its best player during the season, lacks supporting talent. It especially can’t rely on bench player Davion Mitchell to keep performing as well as he’s doing.
The Heat defense will perform better than it did. It is obvious that Miami will need to limit the damage that Cleveland’s offense is able to inflict on Herro. Miami’s head coach has a strong reputation, so one has to expect him to identify and solve this problem.
Expect some combination of hedging on ball-screens, help defense, and zone to keep Cleveland’s offense from exploiting Herro to the extent that it did. Of course, Herro is a prideful player, so he is going to be motivated to defend a lot better than he did.
With obviously needed adjustments, particularly from Miami’s defense, and with shot-making from both teams that conforms to reasonable expectations, the combined point total will drop dramatically relative to what it was in Game 1.
NBA Pick: Under 212 (-110) at BetOnline
Golden State Warriors vs. Houston Rockets
Wednesday, April 23, 2025 – 09:30 PM EDT at Toyota Center
Experience Mattered in Game 1
Golden State won Game 1 by ten points.
The Rockets were surging late but suffered from a slew of bad calls — a missed charge and a missed out-of-bounds call, among others — that helped Golden State stave them off.
Also, Steph Curry had one of those games. Curry surely heard the incessant reports of Houston defender Amen Thompson locking him down in their previous meeting on April 6 and was particularly fired up.Â
Moreover, Houston’s shot-making was unusually ugly. Its three-point conversion rate, for example, was anomalously low.Â
Changes
Thompson is still one of the NBA’s best defenders, with his place in Defensive Player of the Year discussions being well-deserved. You can see 18 minutes of footage on X showing his stoutness both along the perimeter — where he has locked down and can lock down a star like Curry — and at the rim. After Curry just had his “prove it” game, it is Thompson’s turn tonight to take pride and reassert himself.
Golden State scored 95 points with Curry doing as well as he did. The Warriors can be expected to score 90 points tonight.
 With better shot-making stemming from its Game 1 nerves no longer being extant in Game 2, Houston will score way more points. The Rockets on offense do match up well against the Warriors because they love to score in the mid-range, which Golden State does a relatively poor job of guarding because it focuses on limiting shots at the rim.
I’m seeing something like a 98-91 win for Houston here.
Parlay
Houston will win to even the series and thus to keep its hopes in this series alive. Houston makes for a great money-line partner with Cleveland, which has proven to be a vastly more complete team than Miami with its one-star offense.Â
The Cavaliers have the height and length at the rim with their bigs to prolong Miami’s difficulty with scoring at their basket that it displayed in Game 1.Â
Asking Miami to perform well enough from deep to outperform Cleveland with its array of inside and outside scoring talent prominent both in its starting lineup and on its bench is absurd, no matter how much Miami’s defense improves in Game 2.
Of course, Cleveland’s defense will remain solid against the Miami offense’s lack of scoring talent. It will be a low-scoring game where Miami lacks the firepower to make the shots it needs to.
The Parlay
- Rockets ML (-165)
- Cavaliers ML (-670)
NBA Pick: Two-Legged Parlay (-118) at BetOnline
*The line and/or odds on picks in this article might have moved since the content was commissioned. For updated line movements, visit BMR’s free betting odds product.
