As per schedule, the first game will be tomorrow at 6:15 pm, this is quite early for a finals, so let's arrive home early to be able to watch this.
Betting lines are as follows;
SMB -1.5
Magnolia +1.5
over/under (no line yet).
This looks like a trap. I will not take it right away, if the line will move in favor of SMB like going to -3.5, then that would mean people are betting on SMB while will make Magnolia more attractive for the smart money. If the line turns out to be line that, I might take the moneyline for Magnolia, this is an early game, it will not favor the popular team. Just my thoughts though.
This is the FINALS, Magnolia finished at the number 1 seed during the regular season, so it's hard to call it as a trap. However, that's your personal opinion so I might have to respect that. I guess we'll have to wait a bit, let's see if there's significant line movement so we can tell what's happening.
If I can't be confident with my pick, I think I will go on the total. As we all know, Magnolia loves to play pressure defense, so we are looking at another low scoring game here. Maybe I'll stick to that, quite safer than betting on the point spread.
Yes, there's no need to rush if you are betting Magnolia because the line are gonna move since it's expected that money will be going to SMB. It's easy to read the minds of the people. They will think that SMB will win easily since they swept the Ginebra Gin Kings who are the crowd favorite, while Magnolia had a hard time dispatching the young Phoenix Fuelmasters.
It's a mind game, what the public believe will not likely happen, just like what happen to the Phoenix vs Magnolia series, and of course the Ginebra vs SMB series which I'm sure no one expected that Ginebra will be swept. Game is probably be the deciding factor on how the series will go, and it's a very important game of the series. There's an NBA statistics for this stating that the winner of game 1 wins 69.7 percent of the time.
https://www.sportingnews.com/us/nba/news/winning-game-1-nba-finals-statistics-history/ecds60jznkqopjtfpwlessge
According to a story done by CBSnews.com last year, the winner of Game 1 of the NBA Finals has gone on to win the championship 69.7 percent of the time (53-23).
Since it's hard to find information about the PBA league about this, we will just use the PBA for reference.