We at The Crowd’s Line, are happy to announce we are partnering with Barstool sports to deliver a special contest with $150 Amazon gift card as the grand prize! In game five of the Western Conference Finals, the three seed Oklahoma City Thunder will be on the road to take on the one seed Golden State Warriors.

Oklahoma City holds a (3-1) series advantage after winning game four at home.  Game five will be played on Thursday, May, 26th at 9:00 P.M. Eastern Time. “The Crowd” projects a final score of Warriors 107 – Thunder 101.4 with an over/under of 208.4.

UPDATE:

Anthony’s Take:

• I think the quant models are wrong.
• OKC is a different team – in a borderline great way.
• Golden State is a different team – in a not so good way.

Provided the ref’s don’t get caught up rooting for GSW + if OKC can take care of the ball + if OKC can keep the GSW “runs” to a minimum => I really believe OKC can wrap it up tonight.

Those are a ton of caveats, but for OKC:

• They just beat the Spurs – who are awesome year-in and year-out
• They are up 3-1 on the GSW
• They have Billy D on the bench – who is coaching his brains out. He is putting on an adjustment clinic
• They have big Russ and KD. They are playing possessed + lights out => they have something to prove.

I could be wrong. Anything is possible – but I think OKC deserves to be evaluated based on recent form not regular season form.

My forecast => I think “The Crowd” senses the same thing – take OKC and generous points.

Chris’s Take:

The daily combo: No real combo for today.  The simple under is too rich to pollute with additional legs.

	bookmakers ( as of 8:00am ET )		What the Crowd is saying?
	OKC	GS
spread	+7.5	-7.5	OKC +7.5	medium     (54.3%)
moneyline	+275	-350	no value	no value
total	221.0		under	strong       ( 83.8% )

 Breakdown of the Crowd sentiment going into tonight’s game.

	under 220.5 points	over 220.5 points	total
OKC wins	21.4%	4.0%	25.4%
GS wins by less than 7.5 points	28.9%	4.0%	32.9%
GS wins by more than 7.5 points	33.5%	8.1%	41.6%
total	83.8%	16.2%	100.0%

Tonight:

The Crowd thinks there is good value on taking the under, perhaps thinking the prototypical small ball Golden State Warriors will actually try to slow the game down.  There is also a slight lean toward taking OKC and the points, but anyone who watched the game 5 beat down the Cavs put on Toronto last night at home should be nervous about this one.

The money is on GS, but the majority of geeks ( computer simulations ) are OKC to beat the spread.  We could probably infer the number of historical games that go into the simulations given the discrepancy between models. 

 Good luck tonight!

Spread bet signals from The Crowd’s Line and around the net.

source	crowd	Hot hand	Contest lead	Computer model	Crowd by Wager	Analyst
The Crowd’s Line	OKC +7.5	OKC +7.5	OKC +7.5
SportsLine	OKC +7.5			GS -7.5	GS -7.5	GS -7.5
ESPN				OKC, OKC +7.5	GS -7.5
Covers	GS -7.5	GS -7.5				OKC + 7.5
Vegas Insider					GS -7.5
OddsShark	GS -7.5			OKC +7.5	GS -7.5
YahooSports	GS to win

The Crowd’s Line: Equal weighting [ take the under, take OKC and the points ]

• spread line: GS -5.3
• standard deviation of spread line: 9.1
• expected value of $1 bet on OKC +7.5 spread is $0.10
• preferred wager for maximum expected value: Take the under for expected payoff on $1 wager of $0.70 and an estimated Sharpe ratio of 1.0.
• preferred wager for maximum Sharp ratio:
• same as single bet:  all in on under.

Hot Hand [ really take OKC and the points ]

• Experts on GS and OKC ( top 10% spread pickers over last three games for the two teams )
• spread line: GS -1.1
• standard deviation of spread line:  12.2
• expected value of $1 bet: $0.21

Contest Leaders [ take OKC and the points, they might close out the series ]

• Leaders of The Crowd’s Line OKC vs GS series contest.
• spread line: GS +0.5 ( contest leaders think OKC might close it out )
• standard deviation of spread line: 7.0
• expected value of $1 bet:  $0.71

Note: To be eligible to enter a Crowd’s Line contest you must be over 18 years of age, a resident of the United States/Canada, and submit your score prediction on our prediction tool (blog widget). The winner will be selected according to The Crowd’s Line scoring methodology.  If more than one entrant has the same winning score the winner will be selected by random drawing.  Only one prize will be awarded per contest and that winner will receive their prize in 5-7 business days.