The Miami Heat are just 2-7 straight up and 1-8 against the spread in their last nine games on the road. The Heat will need to find a way to win away from home on Friday in Game 6 at Charlotte to keep their season alive.
Heat vs. Hornets 2016 odds: Miami small underdog in Charlotte for must-win Game 6
The Charlotte Hornets are one win away from knocking out the Miami Heat heading into Game 6 as small betting favorites.
Sam Sharpe-USA TODAY Sports
Miami is a 1.5-point road underdog against the Hornets on Friday night according to sportsbooks monitored by OddsShark.com. In their first two games on the road in this series, the Heat were 3-point underdogs in Game 3 and 2.5-point underdogs in Game 4.
Each of the last two games in this series have been decided by four points or less, and unfortunately for Miami both of those close finishes went against the Heat. As a 5.5-point favorite at home, the Heat lost the lead on a late Courtney Lee three-pointer and failed to get it back in the 90-88 loss. Miami is 1-5 straight up and 2-4 against the spread in their last six games on the road against the Hornets.
The Heat haven’t fared well as a small underdog in recent seasons going 3-11 straight up and 5-9 against the spread in their last 14 games as an underdog of three points or less per the OddsShark.com NBA Database.
After falling in a 2-0 hole in this best-of-seven series with back-to-back double digit losses, the Hornets appeared to be in trouble. But the home crowd in Charlotte allowed the Hornets to flip the script on this series, picking up a 96-80 blowout win in Game 3 and then carrying that momentum into close wins in Game 4 and Game 5. That Charlotte crowd will be back in full force on Friday as the team tries to win its first playoff series since 2002.
Friday’s total is set at 191 points on the NBA betting lines. The UNDER is 3-0 in the last three games between the Heat and the Hornets.
These two teams had the same record of 48-34 SU in the regular season, so it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that the series has been pushed to six games or that the spread is set so low in Game 6. Charlotte won’t want to head back to Miami for Game 7, but to avoid doing so it will need to beat a Heat team playing with everything on the line.
