The New York Knicks arrive in Cleveland on Saturday night up 2-0 in the Eastern Conference Finals, and the bookmakers have the Cleveland Cavaliers favored by 2.5 points at home. [1] Tip is 8 p.m. Eastern from Rocket Arena. The broadcast is on ABC.

The paper's Friday account of Game 2's 18-0 third-quarter run treated the closing sequence as the product NBC bought the NBA for — and noted that ABC inherits the Saturday window inside the same rights cycle. [1] Saturday is the broadcast's second chance to sell the same product. The Knicks have not played a game on the road in this series. Cleveland was 27-14 at Rocket Arena during the regular season and is 6-1 there in the playoffs. [2] The home court is the line.

The wager number worth reading is not the spread. It is the Evan Mobley usage figure from Game 2. The Cleveland forward took 14 first-half points and did not attempt a single shot in the second half. His usage rate dropped from 21.4 percent in the first two quarters to 5.3 percent in the final two. [1] The Covers betting model has Mobley over 15.5 points on Saturday at -125 — built on the assumption that home court restores possessions to the 7-footer the offense was running through before the 18-0 run flipped the game. The model's projection puts Mobley at 18.

What this number reveals is not a shooting slump but a possession-distribution problem. The Knicks did not double Mobley off the catch; they made James Harden run pick-and-roll into a Mikal Bridges closeout that did not collapse and made Donovan Mitchell beat them off the dribble in isolation. Cleveland's response was to stop throwing the ball to its best playoff scorer through 41 games. The 5.3 percent number names the coaching artifact. [1]

Rocket Arena's own statistical record is the second number. Cleveland's regular-season 27-14 home mark put it ahead of the Knicks' 22-19 road record by five wins; in the playoffs Cleveland is 6-1 at home against New York's 4-1 on the road, the larger differential the Vegas number rests on. [2] The Knicks have not played in Cleveland in this series. The Cavaliers' Game 7 win against Detroit at home on May 17 was 125-94 — Mobley with 21 on 7-of-10 shooting, 12 rebounds, six assists, two blocks and two steals in 36 minutes. [2] The home version of Mobley is the player Saturday's number is built around.

The injury report is shallow on both sides. OG Anunoby is questionable for New York with a hamstring; Cleveland has nothing material reported. [2] Larry Nance returned from illness in Game 1. James Harden's 18 points on 6-of-15 shooting from Game 2 was the kind of performance the Cavaliers will accept from a third option, not a second; whether he produces 25 on 9-of-18 against the same Bridges-led closeout scheme is the question Game 3 answers.

What the paper has been watching is the product itself. NBC paid premium for late-game inventory inside an eleven-year, $76 billion package; the ABC Saturday window is the same rights deal's second face. The closing run of Game 1 (44-11) and the third-quarter run of Game 2 (18-0) produced the kind of broadcast inventory the network's argument was sold on. Whether Cleveland's home crowd produces the kind of run that buries the inventory and returns the network to a Mitchell-Brunson three-game series is the Saturday verdict. The Cavaliers, down 0-2, are the only team in Eastern Conference Finals history to come back from 0-2 and reach the Finals if they manage it. [3] The teams that did it from any conference between 1947 and the present are listed at five.

The broadcast itself is the third number. ABC's Saturday window inside the NBC-Disney-Amazon package is a different network's monetization of the same intellectual property NBC purchased the rights to; the Saturday-prime-time window is the second-most-watched basketball slot of the playoffs after the Finals. The audience that watched the 18-0 run live on TNT-equivalent inventory Thursday night will see ABC's promotional cuts of the same sequence inside Saturday's pregame. The closing run as broadcast asset gets to be sold twice. Whether it converts a second time depends on Mobley, Mitchell, and a Tom Thibodeau team that has now won nine consecutive playoff games — the franchise's longest postseason streak since the league reorganized in 1971.

The spread is the number on the screen. Mobley's usage is the number under it.

-- MAYA CALLOWAY, New York