TD Garden, Monday 8:30pm (ET)

What an Eastern Conference Finals series this has turned out to be. The Miami Heat took the early ascendancy when they won both road games to start the series, catching the Boston Celtics napping. The Heat backed it up with a home win in Game 3 to take a dominant and historically unassailable 3-0 lead.

However, fast forward a week or so later and this series is now all square at 3-3 thanks to a determined fight back from the Celtics. They clinched Games 4 and 5 comfortably, but required a Derrick White buzzer-beating putback layup to take Game 6 on the road. The Celtics are now just the fourth team in NBA history to force a Game 7 after trailing 3-0, but will aim to become the first to ever go on to win the series.

Clearly, momentum is now on the Celtics side and they’ll be the more confident team heading into Game 7, but the bookies have priced them as 7.5-point favorites at the spread, which I believe is a bit of an overkill. Yes, they deserve to be favorites, but they’ve also lost 2/3 three games on their home deck in this series, and won only 2/4 at home last series against the 76ers.

Also, the Heat have proven to be one of the most resilient teams in these playoffs and will be desperate to avoid becoming the first team to ever squander a 3-0 lead.

Taking the emotion out of it, the Heat simply don’t deserve to be such massive underdogs on Monday night. I’m more than happy to back them in to at least keep this close, which would see them cover the big spread.