NBA Multi bet of the Weekend| February 19

A bit of a different look for this weekend in the NBA, with most of the league set to take a break for the All-Star weekend. The best in the business, however, will be headed to Indianapolis, where they will put on a high-scoring, defenceless exhibition of their talents. It’s not a typical weekend multi, but in a game which is typically not particularly easy to predict, these are three bets that I think stand out as good value to create a solid same game multi for the weekend’s feature game.

19th February, 12.00pm AEDT, Gainbridge Fieldhouse 

The talent on both of these sides, obviously, is very high, but to me there is very clearly more of it on the Western Conference team. That is exacerbated significantly by the absence of the East’s best player, Joel Embiid, but even with him the West would probably have the edge. The East have a few options to replace Embiid – they could start Bam Adebayo, or they could start someone like Paolo Banchero and move Giannis Antetokounmpo to the five – but regardless, Embiid’s replacement won’t be nearly as good as the West’s starting centre – a guy called Nikola Jokic. The forwards – Giannis and Jayson Tatum for the East, LeBron James and Kevin Durant for the West – are probably similarly matched, with the East maybe having a slight edge courtesy of the fact that Giannis tends to take this game pretty seriously. In the back court, it’s again the West who should get the better of their opponents – Luka Doncic and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander are both in the top four in MVP discussions, which Tyrese Haliburton and Damian Lillard, as good as they are, are not. The depth in the West is also a whole lot better – they’ve got Steph Curry, Devin Booker, Kawhi Leonard, Anthony Edwards and Anthony Davis all coming off the bench among others, which should have the East covered pretty easily. As good as guys like Tyrese Maxey, Banchero, Jaylen Brown and injury replacements like Trae Young and Scottie Barnes are, they aren’t as good as the Western Conference reserves. Talent doesn’t always translate directly to results in these games and how much effort each team put in plays a big part, but the Western Conference has a much better team and, particularly given the relatively close odds set by NBA betting sites for this game, look like great value as an anchor to our multi. 

19th February, 12.00pm AEDT, Gainbridge Fieldhouse 

Now to the points total, which has unsurprisingly been set extremely high by betting agencies. This game is always really high scoring – nobody plays defence, and it’s all about showing off the incredible athleticism and talent of these players – but the total of 367.5 match points looks way too high to me. Four years ago, the league changed the scoring format of this game to try to invoke a little more interest in it, introducing what’s called the Elam method to finish the game. This means that rather than the winner simply being who scores the most points in four quarters, at the end of three quarters, a target score is set. This target is determined by adding 24 points to the team which is leading after three quarters. In the first year using this method, for example, Team Giannis led 133-124 after three quarters, so the target was set at 157. Team LeBron ended up getting there first, winning that quarter 33-24. Using this method obviously makes the games a little lower scoring as generally there aren’t all that many points in the final quarter, and the proof was in the pudding – in the four years since that method has been introduced, no game has gone over the points total of 361.5 set for this year’s game, and three haven’t gone close. However, the reason this year’s line is set so much higher than all those games is the removal of the Elam method – God knows why given that it made the game a lot more interesting. Despite its removal, however, there is still good reason to believe that this points total is too high. In the two years prior to the Elam method being introduced, the total match scores sat at 342, and just 293. The two years before that – 2016 and 2017 – it went over, and prior to that, it had never gone over 367 points in history. Of course, the game has changed drastically and points have become much easier to come by in the All-Star game, but the whole reason the league brought in the Elam method to end games was because of those two very high scoring games in 2016 and 2017, which aren’t particularly enjoyable to watch for anyone. Nobody in the league benefits from absolutely zero defence being played – not the fans, not the administration – and with money for charity on the line there is also a little more incentive for each team to win. Those games of close to 400 points are, I think, a relic of a bygone era, and even without the Elam ending this game should remain well under 367.5 points.  

19th February, 12.00pm AEDT, Gainbridge Fieldhouse 

Finally, let’s round out the weekend multi with a player prop, one based around a player who is tailor made for this game, who has performed brilliantly in it in the past, and who enters it in some of the hottest form of his illustrious career. Steph Curry is exactly the kind of player fans want to watch in this game – a player who is capable of the extraordinary and who has a license to let rip from anywhere on the floor he wants – even more so than what he has when he is wearing the blue and gold. Unsurprisingly in the past, this game has turned out pretty well for him. Last year he missed due to injury, but the year prior he put up a casual 50 points, hitting a ridiculous 16 of a ridiculous 27 three-point attempts. The year prior he was a little more subdued – he took just 16 three-point attempts, but hit eight of them and ended up with 28 points. He had a couple of average games in the two All-Star games before that, but it’s worth noting that he is on a shooting tear at the moment the likes of which not even he has ever achieved in his life. In the four games leading up to the All-Star break he hit a ridiculous 36 threes (!!), averaging nine a game and becoming the first player in NBA history to hit at least seven three-pointers in four consecutive games. Harking back a little further, he’s also hit at least seven in seven of his last ten games, a ridiculous run of form and one which lends itself to yet another thrilling shooting performance from him in a game in which he will likely take close to 20 attempts from beyond the arc. With a couple of twos in the mix for good measure, he probably only needs to hit six or seven long bombs to get to 25 points (only being a relative term here), and given he is paying a fair bit better than even money to get there, that looks like a great bet to round out our multi and give it a bit of a value boost.