NBA Expert Tips and Best Bets | Jan 1

The NBA will ring in the New Year down under with six games on January 1st Australian time, which is of course New Year’s Eve across the Pacific. There are some great games in there, too; it kicks off with the Pacers hosting the Bucks, while later the Spurs take on the Clippers, the Thunder face the Timberwolves, the Suns host the Grizzlies and the Lakers host the Cavaliers just a couple of days after LeBron James turned 40 years old – though he remains questionable for that game due to illness. Below, take a look at our three best bets for the day’s action.

Andrew Nembhard to score 15+ points @ $2.20 | Unibet

Admittedly this is a bit of a strange one to kick things off, but while Andrew Nembhard may not be the player that people tune into this one to watch, he has been hooping of late. Mostly he’s out there for his defensive intensity, but while he has been as much of a pest as ever for opposing guards of late, his offensive output has increased dramatically. On the season, the 24-year-old Canadian is averaging only 10.9 points – which is incidentally the highest number of his three-season career. But he appears to have a newfound confidence over his past few games. In the past six games he has suited up for, Nembhard has scored at least 15 points on five occasions. In that time, he is averaging 17.17 points per game, and it is not as though he’s doing it on unsustainable shooting, either. In that time, he is going at 54.4% from the field and 43.8% from three – certainly numbers that are better than his career average, but not by an enormous amount. What’s more, the only time that he has failed to hit that 15-point mark during his last six games came against the Kings when he played only 19 minutes because, well, they won by 27 points, and he still managed 12 points in those 19 minutes. Nembard is taking a lot more shots than he usually does over recent games, and with him hitting them at a good clip, there is no reason to think that this increased responsibility on offence will not continue, at least for the time being. It also helps that the Pacers are taking on a high scoring team in the Bucks, so there should be plenty of points being scored in this one. Considering he has hit 15 points in five of his last six games, the better than even money on offer with betting sites for Nembard to get there again looks pretty generous.

Thunder -7.5 @ $1.90 | QuestBet

If the Thunder are not the best team in the league they are mighty close, and in recent times you would be hard-pressed to find another team that has played even close to as well as they have. They have won six games on the trot, and the only one out of their last 12 that they have lost was the NBA Cup Final against the Bucks, which does not count towards their win/loss record, so factoring that in they are on an 11-game winning streak in the regular season. And by and large they have been winning with ease. Just three out of those 11 wins came by a single-figure margin, those being against the Pacers, Heat and Magic, and in their last outing the Thunder won by 24 points against the Grizzlies. They are good wherever they play, but their home court is unsurprisingly not an easy place for opposing teams to win or even get close, the Thunder boasting a 13-2 record there this season. The team they welcome on Wednesday in the Timberwolves, of course, made it through to the Conference Finals last season, but they have not been the same team so far this season. They have shown some improved form of late and enter this game on a three-game winning streak, but each of those wins has been by six points of less. They have admittedly been against solid teams – the Spurs, Rockets and Mavericks – but those teams are likely to be fighting for playoff spots in the competitive Western Conference, while the Thunder look more likely than not to be finishing on top. The Timberwolves are a capable team particularly defensively, but the Thunder have been simply unstoppable this season and even more so of late. The 7.5-point line set by NBA betting sites isn’t small, but teams have rarely been getting that close to the Thunder, particularly in Oklahoma City.

Celtics over 125.5 total match points @ $1.93 | PlayUp

The Raptors’ defence is, to put it bluntly, an absolute disaster at the minute. Over the season it is pretty poor too, with their defensive rating sitting at 116.5, the fifth worst in the league. But man, over the last three games they might as well have sent five witches hats out there. Against the Knicks, Grizzlies and Hawks, they have, in order, given up 139 points, 155 points (!!) and 136 points, and their defensive rating in that time is an incredible 131.1 points. Unfortunately for them, on Wednesday they head to Boston to take on the third best offence in the league on their own home court, a court at which the Celtics offensive rating is nearly a full 4 points better than it is on the road. This is a recipe for disaster for the Raptors. Granted they have played a couple of really good offensive teams over their last three games, but conceding at least 136 points in three consecutive games is hard to achieve if you tried. Making matters even worse, the Celtics are on a strong run of offensive form of their own; over their past three games, the same period during which the Raptors have been giving up points like they are going out of fashion, the Celtics have been scoring 123.3 points per game with an offensive rating of 126.3 points. Betting agencies have set a pretty high number for the Celtics to reach, but based on how they have been scoring and how the Raptors have been defending, they should put up a massive score.