NBA Expert Tips and Best Bets | Dec 12

Thursday will be the second day of the NBA Cup quarterfinals, with two games scheduled back to back kicking off at 11am AEDT. It begins with the Knicks hosting the Hawks, before the Warriors head to Houston to take on the impressive young Rockets in the early afternoon. Our bets for the day start off with a points total punt on the first game of the day, before we hone in on a couple of player props for the Rockets vs Warriors matchup. Take a look at all of our reasoning below.

Under 237.5 total match points | $1.88 with QuestBet

This is a very high line, and while that is understandable given that the Hawks are one of the fastest and highest scoring teams in the league – both in terms of points for and points against – this one looks a little too high. For starters, even their games haven’t been passing a number like this all that often – granted they have in the past two games, but the four prior to that fell comfortably short of the number. The Knicks, meanwhile, haven’t played in a game that has seen this many points scored since the 28th of November. In the six games they have played since, none have gone over 231 points. While the Hawks like to get up and down the floor and generally have games with plenty of possessions, the Knicks are a lot more methodical, playing one of the slowest paces in the league. It certainly works for them, with their season-long offensive rating the best in the NBA, but it also means that despite being very efficient, they don’t generally play really high scoring games. What’s more, they have locked in on defence in recent games, boasting an offensive rating of just 105.8 in their past six matches, and the Hawks have been a lot better in that regard too, sitting just inside the top ten for defence over that same period. Already there is plenty going for the under here, but adding even further to it is the fact that there is a lot on the line in this NBA Cup quarterfinal. Obviously these two teams will try to play the way they always do in this game, but invariably in games with a lot on the line, defence locks in and it becomes harder to score. That happens in every postseason, and while the NBA Cup is a new addition to the league, with $500,000 on the line for every player there is plenty of reason for these players to lock in at the defensive end of the floor. This won’t likely be a low-scoring game, but 237.5 is a lot of points, and it’s hard to see this game getting to that number.

Jalen Green to score 25+ points | $3.50 with PlayUp

Jalen Green is an explosive and potentially incredibly damaging offensive player, but thus far his NBA career has been plagued by inefficiency. He showed some signs of improvement in the back half of last season, but though he has been part of a rapidly developing Rockets’ squad, on a statistical level his individual season has been much the same as previous years – in fact even worse, with his shooting at a career low 39.9% from the field and 32.8% from three-point range for 19.5 points per game. But when Green gets his tail up, he is extremely hard to stop, and that tail has been flying high in the air over recent games – well, at least some of them. He has been up and down like a yoyo over his past five games, but it’s in those situations in which value can be found for a player to have a particularly good – or particularly bad – game. The line set for Green’s points total in this game by betting sites is right around his season average, which is understandable, but in his last five games he has scored at least 28 points three times. Sandwiched in between those games have been a nine-point effort and a 14-point, so from that lens, the pure over is not necessarily a good bet. But the way he has been playing lately, there is a good chance that if Green gets going he will fly well past his points line. Having passed 25 points relatively comfortably in three of his past five games, odds of $3.50 to get there in this one look pretty juicy, and if you wanted to get even riskier, his long odds to get 30 points wouldn’t be the worst bet either. Green showed over the latter stages of last season that he is capable of extended stretches of strong form, and he appears to be kicking off one of those now. This is a good time to take advantage before NBA betting sites catch on.

Jonathan Kuminga over 16.5 points | $1.90 with Unibet

Jonathan Kuminga had a relatively slow start to the season, but since moving into the starting lineup a few games ago he has been given a substantially bigger role on offence by Steve Kerr. Since returning from a two-game absence, Kuminga has started in five of six games, and has played at least 28 minutes in each of those – that’s after he was averaging closer to 20 minutes per game this season prior to that. And in those games, he has been one of the Warriors’ primary offensive weapons. In those five games, Kuminga has scored 19, 19, 33, 13 and 20 points per game – all but the fourth of those seeing him comfortably exceed his season average of around 15 points per game. And importantly, he is taking plenty of shots, putting up at least 15 in those games and an average of more than 18. Generally shot attempts is relatively consistent unless there is a change in role, so we can be confident that Kuminga will again take close to 20 shots in this game. Despite that, betting agencies have set his line only slightly above his season average at 16.5. Andrew Wiggins will most likely return to the lineup for this game which could theoretically take a few shots away from Kuminga, but he has only missed one game anyway so prior to his absence Kuminga was starting and taking plenty of shots – and making them at a decent clip, too. This seems set to be his role at least for the time being – taking somewhere in the realm of 15-20 shots and playing close to 30 minutes, and if he does that he should be averaging well beyond the 16.5 points that he has been pegged for in this game. This is one that the bookies haven’t quite adjusted yet to fit a players’ new role, and the over looks like really good value as a result.