NBA Expert Tips and Best Bets |May 23

Just four teams remain in the race for the NBA Championship, and on Thursday two of them will kick off their seven-game series when the Timberwolves host the Mavericks. Very few expected this matchup to come to fruition, but the Wolves demonstrated that they are well and truly the real deal by knocking off the reigning champs in the Nuggets, while the Mavs have shown that even with a top-heavy team led by their freakishly talented backcourt, they are capable of beating anyone. With just one game for the day, we’ll focus a lot on player props for our best bets, which you can check out below.  

Timberwolves -4.5 @ $1.95 | GetSetBet 

After the way that the playoffs have played out so far, it’s very tough to pick a winner in this series. But the Timberwolves certainly deserve to be favourites, having been the better team throughout the course of the season and just knocked off the team that many expected to go all the way, or at the very least make their way through to the NBA Finals. Also significantly in the Timberwolves’ favour, and the factor that perhaps most inclines me to take their line set at 4.5 by NBA betting sites, is the match ups between these two teams so far this season. They have played on four occasions with the Timberwolves winning three of those, but more significant than just that 3-1 record is the nature of those victories. Where the Mavericks win was a close game in Dallas, the Timberwolves won the other three games by 8, 18 and 34 points, the latter of those being the most recent time that these two sides have played. The Mavericks aren’t without a chance this series courtesy largely due to Doncic and Irving’s ability to do absolutely anything on their day, but the Timberwolves league-best defence will look to stifle their influence and force the ball out of their hands wherever possible. Whether that works remains to be seen, but they well and truly deserve to be favourites and can get past this line set by betting sites in the series opener.

Kyrie Irving under 21.5 points @ $1.94 | BlueBet 

Kyrie Irving is arguably the most naturally gifted player in a series which includes both Luka Doncic and Anthony Edwards, but that doesn’t always translate to big numbers. Irving is an underrated teammate, happy to take a back seat in order to allow his fellow Mavs to get going in the knowledge that, if and when he needs to, he has the capacity to take over at the offensive end of the floor. Never was that more evident than against the Thunder. He failed to score more than 22 points in any of the six games and in three of them scored 12 or less, but it wasn’t as though he was chucking up a whole lot of inefficient shots. He just wasn’t taking many in general, taking 11 or less in each of those three low scoring games and not all that much more in the rest. Then, in the final game of the series with a spot in the Western Conference Finals up for grabs, he took things up a notch, taking 23 shots – easily the most he had taken all series. He wasn’t actually particularly efficient then and still ended up with only 22 points, but the hope for this bet is that he won’t take nearly that many shots. As the first game of the series, expect him to feel things out, look to get others involved and allow Luka to do his thing, which will likely lead to less than 20 points once again. 

Luka Doncic to record a triple double @ $4.80 

Let’s end with a much longer odds player prop, but one which looks like really good value at close to $5. Doncic is a consistent triple double threat – he nearly averaged one over the course of the entire season with 9.2 rebounds and 9.8 assists – though while he goes relatively close to recording one in most games, he does fairly often fall marginally short. But considering how consistently he puts himself right in the mix to get one, the odds here look significantly over what they should be, particularly given that he has now recorded a triple double in his last three games. None of those have been huge ones – he had 12 rebounds and 10 assists in the first, 10 and 11 in the next and then 10 and 10 in the last, but still, the fact that he is getting even close so significantly of late means that the odds here look really appealing. The Timberwolves’ strangling defence will likely have more of an impact on Doncic’s scoring than his passing ability, and given that he could clear double figure points in his sleep that won’t have too much impact on his capacity to record a triple double. As the best player on his team in the first game of the Western Conference Finals, he will no doubt come out firing, hopefully leading to him snaring plenty of loose rebounds too and helping him to what would be a fourth consecutive triple double, and a pretty handy payout for our last bet of the day.