NBA Expert Tips and Best Bets | January 12

The working week in Australia concludes with a relatively light on day of NBA action, with only four games set to take place over the course of our Friday. It begins with an early one at 6am local time when the Nets take on the Cavaliers in Paris, of all places, before regular programming resumes a few hours later across the Atlantic with an intriguing couple of games bookended by a top-of-the-East battle between the Celtics and the Bucks, and a star-studded clash between the Suns and the Lakers. Take a look at our three best bets for the day below.

Cavaliers -3.5 | $1.90 with BlueBet

Were this actually a home game for the Cavs this line would be a put-your-house-on-it type number, but even in Paris it looks pretty tempting. Cleveland’s season hasn’t gone exactly to plan for a number of reasons, not least injury, but even with Darius Garland and Evan Mobley still absent they should be able to blow past this line without too much trouble. They’ve found a nice little vein of form with Mitchell back in their lineup, winning their last three games – albeit against some pretty poor teams. But the Nets, while perhaps a little better than the Wizards and Spurs, who the Cavs have beaten in those past three games, are not exactly setting the world on fire. They somehow managed to beat the Thunder on the second leg of a back to back a couple of games ago, but that was the only of their last seven games that they’ve won, and some of those losses have been nothing short of the disaster. Included among those runs are defeats to the Wizards and Trail Blazers, while they’ve also suffered losses by more than 20 points to both the Pelicans and the Bucks. They are a really poor team at the moment and don’t deserve only a 3.5-point handicap against many teams. The Cavs are one who should be able to beat them by more than that amount, making this a pretty tempting line for the NBA’s French exhibition.  

Thunder -13.5 | $1.89 with GetSetBet 

It’s a big line set by NBA betting sites for this game, but there is a good reason why. These two teams could barely be in opposite situations. The Thunder are rolling along beautifully having won seven of their past nine games to take their record to 24-11 – good for second in the West. Most of those wins have been by less than this line of 13.5, but against the Blazers they should be able to get past it with a big win. Portland is in a terrible patch of form in what is already a pretty average season, having lost four of their past five games by big margins. The solitary exception was an overtime win against the Nets, but that game aside their other four have seen them lose to the Mavericks twice, Knicks and Suns by at least 21 points per game and an average of a huge 28.5 points. Those losses have been against solid teams, but the Thunder are playing better than all of them, so a line of less than half of that average looks pretty tempting. This is a big number to get past and there is always the prospect of a backdoor cover on the Blazers’ part, but they are playing so poorly and the Thunder so well that this could easily be a 20+ point margin by the end of the game. 

Isaiah Hartenstein over 10.5 rebounds | $1.82 with PlayUp 

Isaiah Hartenstein entered this season potentially as the Knicks’ third option at the center position behind Mitchell Robinson and Jericho Sims, but a long-term injury to the former has seen him jump into the starting role, and in recent games he has used those minutes well, proving to be a menace on the board for opposing teams. Over the last four games he has shown a clear intention to improve his rebounding, racking up an average of just under 15 per game in that time. There was one notable exception in which he had just six, but in the other three he has had 20, 19 and 14, the latter two coming in his past two games. What’s more, those 14 boards came in just 28 minutes as the Knicks blew out the Blazers and he wasn’t required late in the game. He will play 30+ minutes in this one, and at the rate he’s currently rebounding that should be enough to go well past his line of 10.5, and even if there is a little bit of juice on that total it’s still well and truly worth it. That one exception against the Sixers and Joel Embiid aside, he’s rebounding at a rate of around one every couple of minutes, and against rookie Dereck Lively II he should have no problems flying way past this total.