On Wednesday, the second NBA Cup winner in history will be decided, with the Thunder and the Bucks locking horns in Las Vegas for a little bit of prestige and a fair chunk of cash. That is the only game for the day, and NBA betting sites have unsurprisingly devoted plenty of attention to it. We’ve scoured through them to find what we think are some of the game’s best bets, with player props a focal point of our tips. Take a look at all of our bets and reasoning below.
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Oklahoma City Thunder vs Milwaukee Bucks
Thunder -4.5 | $1.86 with QuestBet
The Bucks are a team with plenty of top-end talent in the form of Giannis Antetokounpo and Damian Lillard, and have been in good form of late with three wins in a row and ten from their last 12. But the Thunder are one of the absolute best of the best, the runaway championship favourite alongside the Celtics, and so far this season, Milwaukee have shown a complete inability to get the job done against the elites of the league. Against the seven teams with the best records in the NBA at this point in time, the Bucks have played eight games. They have won exactly one of them, that being against the Rockets by just a solitary point. That aside, they have lost to the Celtics three times, the Cavaliers twice, and both the Grizzlies and the Knicks once. The Thunder are well and truly in that category; in fact they are better than all of those teams except the Celtics. This pretty much fits in with what the Bucks shape up as being this season; they are a solid enough team that will be playing in the postseason and could snag a few wins against some very good teams, but with their lack of depth and not quite as much cohesion between Lillard and Antetokounmpo as they clearly envisioned when they brought Lillard in, they are only a marginally better than league average team on both defence and offence. The Thunder, in contrast, have the best net rating in the league. This line is probably a little shorter than it would be in a regular season game, but the fact that there is more on the line in this one does nothing to change the fact that the Thunder are simply the better team. What’s more, they should match up pretty well, with Isaiah Hartenstein’s elite interior defence complementing beautifully what is a team filled with excellent defensive players – the kind of team that Giannis’ lack of a jump shot becomes increasingly detrimental against. He won’t get to the rim with nearly the ease he would like in this game, while at the other end of the floor the Thunder’s league-leading offence will likely continue doing what they do basically every game. The Bucks might hang around for a while, but the Thunder should ultimately be able to break away and win by more than the 4.5-point line set for this game.
Oklahoma City Thunder vs Milwaukee Bucks
Damian Lillard over 22.5 points | $1.88 with PlayUp
The Thunder are an excellent defensive team, there is no doubting that, and they will make life very difficult for every player on the Bucks. But even factoring that in, the line set for Damian Lillard by betting agencies is really low considering his recent form. In fact, it’s not just his recent form that it looks low for – Lillard has averaged at least 24 points per game for a decade, and this season is sitting at 25.7. Over his past ten games, he has been in particularly good form – he had a really down scoring game a few days ago against the Nets, managing just 15 points in that one, but aside from that he has been hitting the mid 20s with a whole lot of consistency. In fact, that 15-point game is the only time in his last ten outings that Lillard has failed to surpass this line – a pretty good strike rate. Lillard will be facing some very tough defence, with the likes of Cason Wallace, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, and most commonly the absolutely defensively elite Lu Dort guarding him, and that is likely the reason that his over/under number is a little lower than it otherwise might have been. The Thunder and the Bucks have not yet played each other this season so we can’t get a gauge on anything through that lens, but regardless of how good the Thunder backcourt defence is, the fact that Lillard has passed this number nine times out of his last ten games, often easily, is reason enough to get on this over. Good offence beats good defence in the NBA, and Lillard’s offence has been pretty good of late.
Oklahoma City Thunder vs Milwaukee Bucks
Giannis Antetokounmpo over 11.5 rebounds | $1.88 with Unibet
Giannis Antetokounmpo is a competitive guy, and the NBA Cup Final is a game that he will want to put his stamp on. Maybe he’ll do that by scoring a bunch of points, though the wall that the Thunder will put up between him and the basket, their raft of elite defenders and length could make things hard for him. But something that he has a lot more control over is his rebounding. Typically, Giannis lifts his rebounding rate in the playoffs – that hasn’t been the case the last couple, but he’s hardly played in the postseason in that time, missing last year’s through injury and playing just three games in the 2022-23 playoffs. Over the two seasons prior to that, however, the Bucks played 42 playoff games – in the first of those seasons he averaged 13.8 boards, in the second he averaged 12.8, while in the third he averaged 14.2. Those are some big numbers. So why am I telling you about Giannis’ playoff numbers? Basically, it demonstrates his increased intensity on the boards in big games. He wants the ball in his hands at every opportunity in these games more so than any others, and the NBA Cup Final is a big game in every sense of the word. But betting sites have not adjusted his numbers to account for this fact. He averages exactly 11.5 rebounds so far this season, and his over/under is bang on 11.5. For just another game this would be a reasonable line, but this is not just any other game. Already he continued this trend in the NBA Cup semi-final in which he grabbed 14 rebounds; expect him to do it again with another big game on the glass.
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James is a sports writer from Melbourne, and has contributed to a variety of publications covering a range of sports including basketball, cricket, Australian Rules, golf and surfing to name a few. An avid fan of all of the above and more, James’ downtime is spent falling ungracefully off his surfboard, turning over footies and playing an out of tune guitar.