NBA Expert Tips and Best Bets | Jan 2

Just over half of the league will take to the floor for what is the first day of 2025 in the USA, with the eight-game slate kicking off at 11am when the Wizards host the Bulls, and concluding with a 2pm game between the Kings and the 76ers. Our best bets kick off with the first game of the day, with a couple of line and moneyline bets to begin the day followed up by a player prop in the Pelicans vs Heat game. Take a look at the three bets below.

Bulls -5.5 @ $1.92 with QuestBet

It’s safe to say that the Wizards ain’t much chop. They have won just three of their last 26 games harking all the way back to October, and the last two of those came against the Hornets. Even more remarkably, just two of those defeats have come by single-figure margins. That makes the fact that betting sites have set the line for this game at just 5.5 hard to believe. The Bulls are no world beaters, but they are a mid-tier team in the Eastern Conference and come into this game off the back of consecutive wins. They will be without Ayo Dosunmu for this one as they have been for a few in a row, while Zach LaVine, their most important player, is also listed as questionable having missed their most recent game. Particularly the latter of those would be a major out, but LaVine himself has said that he intends to return for this game. Even if he doesn’t, the Wizards have been losing to teams that are worse than the Bulls sans LaVine by plenty for two months now, so the 5.5-point line would look pretty tempting. The fact that LaVine appears to be more likely than not to play, however, makes it impossible to ignore. The Wizards have been unable to be competitive in the vast majority of games that they have played for a long time, regardless of who they have played against. The last time they played the Bulls was in the NBA Cup, and the Bulls were victorious in that game by 19 points. They might not win by that much this time around, but they don’t even need to get close to that to still cover the line.

Nets to win @ $2.00 with Unibet

What a clash of the titans we have here! Not really. The Nets and the Raptors are both very average teams in a very average Conference, and betting agencies have struggled to separate them. As I write, the difference in odds from one bookie to the next is pretty substantial, but with some of them you can get the Nets at even money or better, and that looks like pretty good value to me. That is not a product of the Nets being just that good, but they have been reasonably solid of late, losing a couple of close ones to the Magic and Spurs heading into this and beating the Bucks prior to that. The Raptors, meanwhile, have been nothing short of a disaster. They have lost a whopping 11 games in a row, and the last few of those have been startling. Four games ago, they gave up 139 points to the Knicks and lost by 14 points. They then went on to give up an incredible 155 points to the Grizzlies to lose by 29 points, before losing by the same margin to the Hawks in the next game. Finally, they rounded out a truly remarkable four-game stretch by losing by 54 points to the Celtics! That gives them an average losing margin over the last four games of 31.5 points. All of the teams that they have played are a fair bit better than the Nets, but still – such dramatic defeats against those teams are indicative of a side that is struggling to be competitive in the league at the moment, and even against easier opposition they do not deserve to be favourites. The Nets will have an adjustment to make after trading Shake Milton and Dorian Finney-Smith for D’Angelo Russell, who is expected to make his debut in his second stint with the Nets in this game. But Milton and Finney-Smith were not exactly mainstays of the Brooklyn team. Even with this adjustment, given how bad the Raptors have been, the Nets look like good value at even money. 

Trey Murphy III to score 20+ points @ $1.90 with PlayUp

The potential of Trey Murphy III has been evident throughout his three seasons in the league, and in his fourth it is beginning to all come together for the versatile wing. Partly that has been due to necessity; initially coming off the bench, a terrible run with injuries for the Pelicans forced him not just into the starting lineup, but into a pivotal role on the offensive end of the floor, and with the added responsibility he has thrived. Murphy is averaging 20.1 points per game this season, more than 5 more points than he has ever averaged before, and he is only getting more comfortable. Last game he just failed to hit the 20-point mark, managing 18 against the Clippers, but prior to that he had hit that number on five consecutive occasions. Overall he has scored 20 points or more in seven of his last nine games, a period during which he is averaging 23.4 points per game. Despite that, he is still even money with NBA betting sites to score 20 points in this game. The Heat are a solid defensive unit and this won’t likely be a hugely high scoring game, but with the line set at 221.5 points it’s not expected to be a complete slugfest either. Regardless, based on recent form it appears far more likely than not that Trey Murphy III will score at least 20 points once again. He took less shots than he has been last game, but that was in no small part a product of CJ McCollum hitting eight three-pointers and subsequently taking a lot more shots than he usually does. That’s unlikely to happen again and Murphy should get a lot more than the 10 shots he got up last game, and he should have ample opportunity to hit 20 points once again.