NBA Expert Tips and Best Bets | Nov 27

It’s NBA Cup time once again on Wednesday, with ten teams taking to the floor across five matchups. It all starts off in relatively uninteresting fashion when the Wizards host the Bulls, but there are a number of interesting matchups thereafter. The Heat will host the Bucks in an intriguing Eastern Conference clash between two decent teams trying to work their way back up the standings after slow stars, while later on, we will see a couple of big Western Conference games when the Timberwolves host the Rockets and the Suns host the Lakers. Take a look at our three best bets for the day’s action below.

Zach LaVine over 22.5 points | $1.88 with PlayUp

Zach LaVine had a slow and injury-interrupted start to the season, but he is beginning to come into some form of late and looks set to continue it in what should be a high-scoring matchup against a poor defensive team in the Wizards. After missing a few games, LaVine showed some erratic form over his first few games back in the Bulls’ lineup, scoring, in order, 18, 26, 31, 8 and then 15 points. But six threes in the final quarter of his next game against the Pistons appears to have helped the explosive guard recapture something resembling his best. He ended that game with 25 points, and since then has scored 27, 26 and 28 points. Granted he has shot well in that time, but he has not been heavily reliant on the floor, using his pace and power to get to the rim for the bulk of his points. And with the confidence which invariably comes with those points, his shot volume is beginning to increase, too. With the line set by betting sites still down at 22.5, this is a good opportunity to take advantage. With the exception of last season, when he played just 19 games due to injury, LaVine has been a roughly 25-point per game scorer for years, and on this incarnation of the Bulls there is no reason to think he won’t be again this season. His recent form suggests as much, and giving us even more confidence in the over is this matchup. The Wizards are not a good team at all but play with plenty of pace and not defending particularly well, meaning opposition teams generally score pretty easily against them. The Bulls’ over/under points line for this game is way up at 124, which is a big number and means there should be plenty of opportunity for LaVine to put up another solid scoring game. If you want to get a little frisky, he will also be decent value to score 25+ or even 30+, but we will stick with the over 22.5 points to kick things off.

Over 222.5 total match points | $1.89 with QuestBet

If this game was taking place a couple of weeks ago, this line might look about on the money. Based on recent history, however, it is much too low. The Heat are not usually a high scoring team and started the season in that fashion, with only one of their first six games going over the 222.5 total points line set by betting agencies for this game against the Bucks – and that one game had a total of just 223. But in recent weeks they have been playing much higher scoring basketball. Over the course of the entire season they are bottom ten in the league in pace, 11th in defensive rating and 17th in offensive rating – not exactly a recipe for high scoring basketball. In the last five games, however, they are around league-average in both pace and offence, and their defence has been struggling. The result is that four of those past five games have seen at least 229 points scored. Granted a couple of those games went to overtime, but they had each seen at least 222 points scored in regular time anyway, and now, they come up against a Bucks well and truly on the higher side in terms of both points scored and points conceded. The Bucks have exceeded this total in five of their last six games, generally by quite a lot, with their last two games each resulting in at least 244 points scored. That gives us one team that has passed this 222.5-point total in four of their last five games, and another which has passed it in five of their last six. That is good enough for me, and suggests that this one should go past this relatively low line.

Kevin Durant over 2.5 assists | $1.95 with Unibet

This might be a risk given that it is set to be Kevin Durant’s first game in over two weeks, but that can also be a good time to take advantage because NBA betting sites realistically don’t have as much information as they usually would in order to set a line. The Durant assists line is set very, very low, because clearly the bookies are banking on him not playing a full game. That is a reasonable assumption given that he is 36 years old and returning from a calf injury, but setting the line at 2.5 appears to be overdoing it a little bit. Durant is only averaging 3.4 assists per game this season, but in just nine games that is not really a significant enough sample size to read all that much into. Of much more relevance is the fact that he has averaged right around 5-6 dimes per game for a decade, and will likely average around the same number if he stays healthy for a decent number of games this season. Of course, minutes played is likely to play a role in this, but even factoring that in this looks too low. Durant averages around 5.5 assists in around 35 minutes per game for a very, very long time; as you may have figured out, that is more than two times higher than this line. That means that on average, he would need to play less than half of those 35 minutes in order for this to be an appropriate line, or something around 13 or 14 minutes. He won’t play the full 35 in this game, but generally a player returning from injury wouldn’t be doing so unless they were capable of playing decent minutes, so it’s safe to assume that he will at least be on the court for something in the vicinity of 25 or so minutes. Three assists in 25 minutes for a man who has averaged close to six in 35 minutes for ten years looks to me like a decent bet. Of course, this is not a game of averages and in one individual game there is a lot more variability than there might be over the course of a season. But the fact remains, betting is all about expected return, and Durant’s expected assist total for this game should be closer to three or four, rather than 2.5. It would be no surprise to see this number move as the game gets closer to the tip, but at close to even money odds for over 2.5 this looks like a good bet to finish off the day’s action.