NBA Best Bets Thursday February 15th

Last slate before All Star break!

The best birthday present I got last night was from a referee working in Cleveland. With 46 seconds remaining in a tie game, Donovan Mitchell flashes towards the perimeter on as the Cavaliers look to inbound the ball, bumps Alex Caruso to create space and the whistle blows. The ruling is a foul on Caruso, and since the ball was yet to be inbounded, it is a technical foul. The Cavaliers get a free throw, take the lead, and never relinquish it again. As a 2unit backer of a Cavs -375 ML, I’d like to thank Mr. Referee working in Cleveland.

Thursday is the last day with NBA games before the All Star festivities, there are 3 games and I got small action on two of them.

Milwaukee Bucks -10 (Fanduel, 0.75u)
The Milwaukee Bucks should smack the Mizzlies. Mizzlies only have JJJ, who struggles playing an outsized role, and will be without Ja/Bane/Smart/and even floor spacers like LaRavia. Miz lost 9 straight before getting a win against Houston last night. I spoke on the podcast how Memphis was the sharp side because Houston is amongst the worst road teams in the NBA. Now facing a B2B with Dame and Giannis probable, good luck Memphis. The line opened at 9.5, quickly moved to mostly 10.5s when I grabbed a 10, and is now out to 11. At a very small exposure it is still playable.

The reason for the small exposure is because despite having a massive talent edge, despite having a rest advantage, despite being the healthier team with more depth, it is still backing a comfortable 2 seed the night before all star break. The Bucks are also sending two players to start in the Sunday show. Considering the away game the night going into the break, and won’t have much of a true vacation, I don’t expect to see heavy minutes for Giannis and Dame. Get it done quick and get out. Thats the goal.

We have also seen movement towards the under. If you want to play a Grizzlies team total Under instead of the large spread or the game under, I think that is another strong correlated angle to the market signals on this game.


Timberwolves @ Trailblazers Under 216 (1u)
Two really good strategy points to explore with this game.

1. Lets start with the general tendencies of the “baseball series” style of NBA schedule, where in the last few years we see far more instances of two teams playing two games consecutively against one another. These teams just faced off on Tuesday Feb 13th, in Portland. There is exactly equal rest, and no travel despite the road game for Minnesota. When these situations happen, we generally see reduced scoring, and when the teams are of relative skill level- alternating winning teams. Why? Just like in a NBA playoff series, it becomes more tactical. The defenses start to learn opponent tendencies, force the ball handler away from their preferred spots, more rotation adjustments and mismatch hunting, slower pace and lower efficiency. In general, thats a game filled with under influencers. For this I am grab my read is an early under.

2. I like to cite where I pick up some tricks from, and not the first time I have mentioned the Raheem Palmer trick where when teams play one another in short time window, then remember where the previous line opened, moved, and closed- and mimic the movement towards an expected similar closing number. In that game two days ago, the total opened 214.5, dropped as low as 212.5 and closed at 213.5. I care less about it going over in the result; a one game sample size matters less than what the models predict from a much larger data set. So lets play into the overreaction to the new total opening at 216.5, and play the under 216 where we can find it available.

Note: there has been a flash back up to 216.5, I think its a sign that Anthony Edwards will play. There is still strong money and splits towards the under, my expectation is that this number is still playable for 1unit. Even if Antman suits up, I don’t expect him to be making the insane shots he hit last game to cause that overreactive over.

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