NBA Multi bet of the Weekend| January 20

Saturday in Australia will see a solid slate of NBA games take place, with just under half of the league’s teams taking to the floor across seven games. While a few of those won’t likely attract a lot of interest, there are also a couple of enticing matchups littered across the day, no less so than the potential NBA Finals matchup between probably the best team in each respective conference in the Celtics and Nuggets. Across those games, as always, there is value to be found, and these are the three legs for our weekly weekend multi. 

Saturday 20 January, 11:10am AEDT, Spectrum Center 

Speaking of games which won’t attract a lot of interest, the first of the day pits the 7-33 Spurs against the 8-30 Hornets – not exactly a matchup which will put all that many bums on seats. Neither of these teams, clearly, is particularly good at winning, but the Hornets should have good reason to feel confident about covering the relatively measly line set by betting agencies for this game. They’ve been truly disastrous this season; of their last 18 games, just one of them has been a victory. But that form line doesn’t tell the full story. Lamelo Ball has been out for much of the season, and as far and away their best player at this point in time that clearly had a pretty significant impact on their team. He’s now back and with three games under his belt, and though those three games haven’t turned the Hornets’ fortunes just yet, they will no doubt be a better team with him leading the charge once he gets his legs under him. So far he’s shooting just over 38% in those three games and averaging less than six assists, but having been out for an extended period we can forgive him for that and he will no doubt get better with more time on the floor. The Spurs, meanwhile, will be without their own best player, with Victor Wembanyama set to miss this one. The prodigious rookie has been on a freakish run of late even in limited minutes, perhaps his best performance coming when he put up triple double in just 21 minutes against the Pistons, before he led his Spurs to a commanding victory over none other than the Hornets the very next game with 26 points and 11 boards in just 20 minutes. The Spurs won that game by 36 points, but while in that game Wembanyama played (and dominated) while Ball missed out, the opposite will be true of this one. Neither of these sides has the capacity to deal with absentees to their best players, and with Wemby out and Ball likely starting to feel reacquainted with the NBA, the Hornets should be able to cover the 4.5 point line. 

Saturday 20 January, 11:40am AEDT, Kia Center 

The Orlando Magic have had an excellent first half of the season, surprising many to jump into contention for the playoffs – and for a time look like a chance of slotting in pretty high up in the Eastern Conference. But though they’re still just a couple of games back from the Cavaliers in fourth, the absence of Franz Wagner has had a major impact on the Magic’s fortunes and they are gradually beginning to tumble down the standings. They have lost five of their last six games without him in the side to take their record from a very impressive 21-14 to just a couple of games above .500, and though most of those losses have been to pretty good teams, their latest defeat to the struggling Hawks was a demoralising one. Things don’t get any easier on Saturday either, even if they do return home after a four-game road trip, with Joel Embiid and the 76ers set to enter the Kia Center. They’ve established themselves as the clear third best team in the Eastern Conference on the back of Joel Embiid’s dominant season, and it’s no surprise that his absence or presence on the floor has had a pretty significant impact on their fortunes. After three consecutive losses, two without him, the Sixers got back on the winners’ list against the Kings a few days ago, before he returned just in time to lead them to victory against first the Rockets and then the Nuggets with 41 points in each of those games. The reigning MVP and favourite to win it this season will suit up in Orlando on Saturday while Wagner will once again be absent, but despite that the NBA betting sites have this pegged as a pretty close game. The Magic generally keep games relatively low scoring and close and certainly won’t give the Sixers and easy win, but the line of 4.5 looks like one the Sixers should be able to cover.   

Saturday 20 January, 12.10pm AEDT, Smoothie King Center

Now to our solitary player prop of the day, and the leg which adds a little extra value to this multi. There are plenty of star players who will take to the floor when the Pelicans host the Suns, but I’m eyeing off one of the lesser known Suns who has had a mighty hot hand of late. Grayson Allen is having a brilliant shooting year, hitting an incredible 48% of his three-point shots – which make up a large portion of the shots he takes. And recently, he has been hitting them at a very, very high clip. He averages 13.9 points per game this season – a career-high, but clearly putting him well below his star teammates like Durant, Booker and Beal – but in the last two games he has scored 29 and 20. The most recent of those was the 29 point effort in which he went an incredible 9-14 from long range – the second time he’s hit exactly that many threes from that many attempts in the past six games. Also littered in there are a couple of games in which he’s hit four of them, with a 4-6 effort coming against the Trail Blazers and a 4-8 effort against the Grizzlies. Overall, he’s hit 28 threes in his last six games from 51 attempts at nearly 55%, and though three-point shooting is clearly something with quite a lot of game to game variance, there is some good value to be had for him to hit four once again given the way he has been shooting of late. It’s four times in his last six games that he has got to that number and he’s done it twice in a row, but you can get him at close to $3 with big betting sites to do it again against the Pelicans. With PlayUp he’s at $2.63, and though it’s very possible that his hot streak doesn’t continue tomorrow, there is a good chance that if he hits one or two he will end up hitting four or more – he’s streaky in that way. At longer odds, this is a nice final leg of the multi to add a bit of extra value.