Cavaliers vs. Heat prediction and odds for Wednesday, March 8 (Expect defensive battle)

The Cleveland Cavaliers and Miami Heat will play the first of back-to-back games against each other on Wednesday night in Miami.

The Heat are fresh off a back-to-back home wins over the Atlanta Hawks while the Cavs battled back to beat the Boston Celtics in overtime on Monday night.

These teams have split the first two matchups between them this season, and both games have been defensive battles.

The Cavs come into this game with the best defensive rating in the NBA. The Heat are fifth in that statistic.

Kevin Love (now with Miami) has a bit of a revenge game tonight, if he can play. He is listed as questionable for this game. Kyle Lowry is out for Miami with a knee injury. For the Cavs, the injury report is clear as of this writing.

Let’s dive into the odds and pick for this game:

Cavaliers vs. Heat odds, spread and total

Cavaliers vs. Heat prediction and pick

There’s value on the total in this game, even though it’s set a low number of 214.5.

The first two games between these teams this season finished with 200 and 197 combined points, and these teams profile as the perfect squads to take the UNDER on.

Not only are they both top five in the league in defensive rating, but they also slow the game down, ranking 30th (Cleveland) and 28th (Miami) in the league in pace.

It may not be a fun bet to root for the UNDER, but both teams have hit it more often than the OVER this season.

Miami is 36-30 on UNDERs in the 2022-23 campaign while the Cavs are 35-32. I expect these two elite defenses to slug this game out in Miami.

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Game odds refresh periodically and are subject to change.